Good2Go
Well-known member
2010 Utah 1088
Trying my luck at rallying this year, this was my first 24-hour event. Had more fun than a tornado in a trailer park, met some great folks, made mistakes, learned a lot, weather was perfect, rode a route that looked sorta like this (the numbers don’t necessarily indicate bonus locations):
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Left home early Friday for the 700 mile slog north to SLC. Rolled into the rally hotel mid-afternoon, checked in, did the tech inspection and odo check (which all went smoothly), collected some swag. Went to the room to take a nap, but was too amped up, so had dinner and wandered around looking at all the neat bikes, meeting a few folks.
At the Friday evening rider's meeting we got our rally packs and had our license and registration sealed in an envelope. Off to my room I went to try to make sense of this madness. Read through the alternate routes and immediately discarded them...wasn't sure I had the legs to do the miles they were calling for. Besides, my primary objective was to finish, anything beyond that would be gravy. It was going to be a single checkpoint rally, with the checkpoint way up north in Snowville by the ID border. Once I had all the bonus locations plotted it was obvious the big points were going to be in the second leg, through some combination that included visiting 5 national parks and Vegas . Spent several hours going through dozens of permutations and coming up with the same result each time: that it wouldn’t be possible (for me at least) to get both the parks and Vegas in the 19 or so hours remaining after CP1. It was 1am and I felt like a monkey doing a math problem...not good as I really needed to get to sleep after being up most of the previous night. Both the parks loop and Vegas seemed to be worth about the same amount of points, so I plotted a course to Vegas that included picking up some points in Wendover, Great Basin NP and St. George. I figured I could make good time through eastern NV if needed. Tried to get to sleep but those bonii in southeast UT really intrigued me. Stayed up until 3 plotting a secondary route through the 5 national parks plus some other bonii in the area, in case I decided to go that way. I figured I had until CP1 the next day to decide which route to follow.
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Saturday morning woke up late, slammed down a couple of Boosts and a bowl of oatmeal, then as I headed out the door realized I’d forgotten to build a route for the first leg, and had no idea where I was headed! To make matters worse, I’d also forgot to download the leg 2 routes (that I’d spent so much time on) to the gps. Nice, haven’t even left my room and things are already starting to go wrong. Loaded up the bike, then booted the laptop so I could at least get the bonus locations and my leg 2 routes loaded. The first leg wasn’t all that long so I could figure it out as I went along.
I was one of the last ones out of the parking lot. Looked at the slowride bonus, there was a line, so decided to get some nearby points first then come back to try it. Hmmm, let’s see...the officer's memorial looked close enough, had decent points, so I went there. After taking off my helmet and gloves, digging through all my crap to find a pen (in the glovebox), camera (in the tankbag), and the rally hat (in the trunk), took a pic, filled out the log, put everything away, and was outta there in a smokin' fast 20 minutes. As I was putting stuff away, read the bonus instructions which said I could have just written down the officer's name. Hmmm, it might behoove me to get organized and read the instructions more carefully, LOL. Woo-hoo got my first points.
Next stop was a bmw dealer a few miles up I15. On the way I detoured back to the hotel to see if the slowride line had dissipated. It had. Thought I was going to make it on my first try, but missed it when I put my foot down with 2 seconds to go. Second try wasn’t even close. Oh well. Off again to the BMW dealer. Quick in and out stop to pick up a signed business card and log odo/time. Man, this is F-U-N! Hope all my stops are this easy.
Considered going to Antelope Island, but remembered a bigger point bonus up in Preston, ID, where we had to get the coordinates of a massacre memorial. After a stunningly gorgeous ride through the mountains north of Brigham City I found the memorial easy enough....but couldn't figure out where Garmin’s engineers hid that stinkin’ page that showed current coordinates. Wasted 20 minutes trying to find it. Finally just pulled out my blackberry and got the coordinates off google maps.
It was now about an hour and a half before CP1 opened so I figured I’d head in that direction and pick up the Golden Spike and Rocket Garden boni en route. Another beautiful ride through ID and UT farming communities.
On the way to Golden Spike it dawned on me that while both my leg 2 routes were worth roughly the same points, the National Parks route had more options for additional points in case I found myself ahead or behind schedule. The Vegas route had essentially a fixed number of boni, and if anything went wrong didn’t really offer substantial alternate opportunities. That sealed my plan for the second leg: head southeast and go for the national parks and any coincidental boni along the way.
Pulled into CP1 a few minutes early, downed a bottle of Spiz, refilled my camelbak, loaded up my national parks route and beat feet toward the first of 5 NP’s, Arches. On the way I’d snag a high value bonus at the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry south of Price, some 3 hours away.
Cruising down I15, it felt like forever since I'd seen any other rallyists, I began to wonder if foregoing Vegas was the right choice, after all the Vegas route was much more straightforward. I guess I’d find out soon enough. Not long after getting on UT6, Mr. Meese flew by me, then soon after Mr. Iggy. Cool, I thought, they were probably also going after the NP’s so maybe it was a good decision. I was just behind Iggy going into the Dinosaur Quarry. The road leading in is about 12 miles of dirt (didn’t Steve say no dirt roads in this rally???), I managed 40-something mph on most of it, thinking I was doing pretty good, all the while Matt just kept getting smaller and smaller in front of me and eventually disappeared in a cloud of dust. Eventually made it to the quarry, where Matt and Meese were already heading out. Paid the nice young ladies the entry fee, collected the receipt and snapped a pic for the heck of it:
Next stop Arches NP, where I got a quick pic of the park sign. There was also a high value GPS bonus that mapped on the opposite end of the park. However by this time I’d started to watch my ETA back to SLC, and it showed me arriving a bit too close for comfort to the rally cutoff time. There was a line of cars heading into the park rather slowly, plus this bonus was time restricted so I decided to be conservative and skip it.
Made like a turd and hit the trail to Canyonlands NP, just across the highway from Arches. I had originally plotted the Canyonlands sign location inside Deadhorse Point State Park, as S&T showed a NP boundary there. Now I was having doubts as to whether there really would be a NP sign inside Deadhorse...it would be a 15 mile ride into the park to find out. The alternative was to head south of Moab to the main Canyonlands entrance where I knew for sure there was the required sign. Timewise, I could only do one or the other, so chose to go into Deadhorse, thinking if there wasn’t a sign there, I would skip the remainder of the NP’s and pick up other bonus options instead. I got lucky; there was a Canyonlands NP sign inside of Deadhorse SP. Woot!
From here I jumped back on the 70, then 24 south toward a small bonus in Hanksville. I’d been opening my aux cell at about 3 bars and it’d been working splendidly throughout the rally. I flipped the valve somewhere on 70 and by the time I got on 24, I was down to 2 bars; either the cell had stopped flowing, or was flowing really slow. I pulled over thinking there was air trapped somewhere, and blew into the vent. That didn’t do any good, and now I was down to 1 bar with 40 miles to go before Hanksville. Maybe a clogged filter, but I wasn't about to unbolt the mess and dick with it with the sun going down in the middle of the UT desert. I figured I could make it to Hankville if I took it easy on the throttle, or worst case if I did run out of gas, I could take the whole mess apart and manually dump the aux fuel into the main tank. Ig blew by me doing his happy wave. Foocker
. Rolled into the Hole in the mountain gas station with 20 miles showing on the reserve count-up meter. Gassed up and headed west.
It’s dark by the time I get to the next NP, Capital Reef. I’m wondering when I’m going to start feeling the effects of 3 hours sleep the night before (never really felt tired until I rolled into the hotel at the finish; I guess the rally kept my mind occupied enough to not think about sleep). Grabbed pix of the Capital Reef sign and the Behuin bonus down the road. At first it took several tries to get a decent night pic, but that got better as the night went on.
Sailed through Torrey on my way to the Bryce NP. My ETA back to SLC was a few minutes past the cutoff, but I wasn’t too concerned yet; I figured I'd make up some time on I15 once I got the Zion pic. When I got to Loa I realized that for some reason my GPS didn’t route me through Hwy 12 like I had originally designed the route; it must’ve recalc’ed at some point and now it wanted to send me to 89 via Koosharem instead. Crap, shoulda been paying closer attention, that just added a few minutes to my ETA. I cut south through Antimony and reeled a few minutes back in by the time I pulled into Bryce to get the pic.
Didn't need to, but stopped for gas as my aux still wasn’t flowing very fast. Found one station in Bryce that had pay at the pump, stuck my card in and was denied! Twice! WTF??? It just worked in Hanskville. (Didn’t think to try a different card, lol). Maybe it’s the pump, I muttered inside my Shoei, I’ve got enough to get me down the hill to Zion, I’ll try getting gas there. Said Hi to a few packs of deer grazing alongside the road, no worries, the 4GHIDs zapped 'em a long ways back. Got to the gas at the Zion turn off, and was denied again! Now I’m getting pissed. Tried a different card, and viola. On the horn to BofA, and sure enough, they’d shut my card down due to possible fraudulent activity – buying gas in several cities in the last 24 hours is apparently the typical M.O. of credit card thieves. Oh, yeah, I'd completely neglected to notify them I was travelling, and not to sweat multiple purchases over the next 24 hrs. I assured them the purchases were legit, and they gave me back access to my money. Went into Zion to grab a pic of the sign, and now I had all the pics needed for the NP bounus:
Thought about grabbing a bonus west of Cedar City, but had just under 4 hours to make it back to SLC, and didn’t want to chance a DNF. Plotted a course west out of Zion, to get me onto I15 where posted limits are 75-80, which I was relatively confident my little Gen2 could eek out. But wait, RB had one more surprise...that damn road out of Zion !@#$. The paved parts were bad enough, 15-20mph, but a good chunk of Hwy 9 was torn up for construction, and the best I could do that late in the game was 5-10 mph. I’d avoided cursing the RB up to that point, but could abstain no longer ;-). Actually even considered calling in saying I might be a few minutes late.
Now on I15, the FJR vectored north, Creedence cued up in my helmet, my ETA started magically dropping, giving me several minutes to spare. Made a quick stop in Scipio to grab a six-pack beverage and a receipt for a small bonus there. Kid at the counter said they don’t have six packs of any beverage, but that they did have six packs of donuts, which he assured me would be acceptable. Now I just gotta keep her between the ditches, keep my envelope intact, and I'd be home free.
Rolled into the SLC city limits as the sun was coming up, beautiful. Pulled up to the hotel at 6:40am, feeling like a bag of smashed assholes. But I had finished, and was happy about that. Found out my six-pack donuts didn't satisfy the bonus requirement; the rally pack specifically stated "beverage". Dang, that'll teach me to listen to some kid at a gas station. Did the scoring, turned in my receipts and rally pack, then went to my room for a shower and sleep. Woke up hungry enough to eat the balls off a low flying duck...and Mr. Chalmers didn't dissapoint with a first class buffet and open bar at the awards banquet.
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In retrospect, my decision to go for the NP's turned out to be sound, it allowed me to skip bonuses (Arches GPS, Cedar City) and adjust my route depending on how I was doing on time. I've got a shitload of things I'll be working on before the next one.
Finishing Stats:
Trying my luck at rallying this year, this was my first 24-hour event. Had more fun than a tornado in a trailer park, met some great folks, made mistakes, learned a lot, weather was perfect, rode a route that looked sorta like this (the numbers don’t necessarily indicate bonus locations):
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Left home early Friday for the 700 mile slog north to SLC. Rolled into the rally hotel mid-afternoon, checked in, did the tech inspection and odo check (which all went smoothly), collected some swag. Went to the room to take a nap, but was too amped up, so had dinner and wandered around looking at all the neat bikes, meeting a few folks.
At the Friday evening rider's meeting we got our rally packs and had our license and registration sealed in an envelope. Off to my room I went to try to make sense of this madness. Read through the alternate routes and immediately discarded them...wasn't sure I had the legs to do the miles they were calling for. Besides, my primary objective was to finish, anything beyond that would be gravy. It was going to be a single checkpoint rally, with the checkpoint way up north in Snowville by the ID border. Once I had all the bonus locations plotted it was obvious the big points were going to be in the second leg, through some combination that included visiting 5 national parks and Vegas . Spent several hours going through dozens of permutations and coming up with the same result each time: that it wouldn’t be possible (for me at least) to get both the parks and Vegas in the 19 or so hours remaining after CP1. It was 1am and I felt like a monkey doing a math problem...not good as I really needed to get to sleep after being up most of the previous night. Both the parks loop and Vegas seemed to be worth about the same amount of points, so I plotted a course to Vegas that included picking up some points in Wendover, Great Basin NP and St. George. I figured I could make good time through eastern NV if needed. Tried to get to sleep but those bonii in southeast UT really intrigued me. Stayed up until 3 plotting a secondary route through the 5 national parks plus some other bonii in the area, in case I decided to go that way. I figured I had until CP1 the next day to decide which route to follow.
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Saturday morning woke up late, slammed down a couple of Boosts and a bowl of oatmeal, then as I headed out the door realized I’d forgotten to build a route for the first leg, and had no idea where I was headed! To make matters worse, I’d also forgot to download the leg 2 routes (that I’d spent so much time on) to the gps. Nice, haven’t even left my room and things are already starting to go wrong. Loaded up the bike, then booted the laptop so I could at least get the bonus locations and my leg 2 routes loaded. The first leg wasn’t all that long so I could figure it out as I went along.
I was one of the last ones out of the parking lot. Looked at the slowride bonus, there was a line, so decided to get some nearby points first then come back to try it. Hmmm, let’s see...the officer's memorial looked close enough, had decent points, so I went there. After taking off my helmet and gloves, digging through all my crap to find a pen (in the glovebox), camera (in the tankbag), and the rally hat (in the trunk), took a pic, filled out the log, put everything away, and was outta there in a smokin' fast 20 minutes. As I was putting stuff away, read the bonus instructions which said I could have just written down the officer's name. Hmmm, it might behoove me to get organized and read the instructions more carefully, LOL. Woo-hoo got my first points.
Next stop was a bmw dealer a few miles up I15. On the way I detoured back to the hotel to see if the slowride line had dissipated. It had. Thought I was going to make it on my first try, but missed it when I put my foot down with 2 seconds to go. Second try wasn’t even close. Oh well. Off again to the BMW dealer. Quick in and out stop to pick up a signed business card and log odo/time. Man, this is F-U-N! Hope all my stops are this easy.
Considered going to Antelope Island, but remembered a bigger point bonus up in Preston, ID, where we had to get the coordinates of a massacre memorial. After a stunningly gorgeous ride through the mountains north of Brigham City I found the memorial easy enough....but couldn't figure out where Garmin’s engineers hid that stinkin’ page that showed current coordinates. Wasted 20 minutes trying to find it. Finally just pulled out my blackberry and got the coordinates off google maps.
It was now about an hour and a half before CP1 opened so I figured I’d head in that direction and pick up the Golden Spike and Rocket Garden boni en route. Another beautiful ride through ID and UT farming communities.
On the way to Golden Spike it dawned on me that while both my leg 2 routes were worth roughly the same points, the National Parks route had more options for additional points in case I found myself ahead or behind schedule. The Vegas route had essentially a fixed number of boni, and if anything went wrong didn’t really offer substantial alternate opportunities. That sealed my plan for the second leg: head southeast and go for the national parks and any coincidental boni along the way.
Pulled into CP1 a few minutes early, downed a bottle of Spiz, refilled my camelbak, loaded up my national parks route and beat feet toward the first of 5 NP’s, Arches. On the way I’d snag a high value bonus at the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry south of Price, some 3 hours away.
Cruising down I15, it felt like forever since I'd seen any other rallyists, I began to wonder if foregoing Vegas was the right choice, after all the Vegas route was much more straightforward. I guess I’d find out soon enough. Not long after getting on UT6, Mr. Meese flew by me, then soon after Mr. Iggy. Cool, I thought, they were probably also going after the NP’s so maybe it was a good decision. I was just behind Iggy going into the Dinosaur Quarry. The road leading in is about 12 miles of dirt (didn’t Steve say no dirt roads in this rally???), I managed 40-something mph on most of it, thinking I was doing pretty good, all the while Matt just kept getting smaller and smaller in front of me and eventually disappeared in a cloud of dust. Eventually made it to the quarry, where Matt and Meese were already heading out. Paid the nice young ladies the entry fee, collected the receipt and snapped a pic for the heck of it:
Next stop Arches NP, where I got a quick pic of the park sign. There was also a high value GPS bonus that mapped on the opposite end of the park. However by this time I’d started to watch my ETA back to SLC, and it showed me arriving a bit too close for comfort to the rally cutoff time. There was a line of cars heading into the park rather slowly, plus this bonus was time restricted so I decided to be conservative and skip it.
Made like a turd and hit the trail to Canyonlands NP, just across the highway from Arches. I had originally plotted the Canyonlands sign location inside Deadhorse Point State Park, as S&T showed a NP boundary there. Now I was having doubts as to whether there really would be a NP sign inside Deadhorse...it would be a 15 mile ride into the park to find out. The alternative was to head south of Moab to the main Canyonlands entrance where I knew for sure there was the required sign. Timewise, I could only do one or the other, so chose to go into Deadhorse, thinking if there wasn’t a sign there, I would skip the remainder of the NP’s and pick up other bonus options instead. I got lucky; there was a Canyonlands NP sign inside of Deadhorse SP. Woot!
From here I jumped back on the 70, then 24 south toward a small bonus in Hanksville. I’d been opening my aux cell at about 3 bars and it’d been working splendidly throughout the rally. I flipped the valve somewhere on 70 and by the time I got on 24, I was down to 2 bars; either the cell had stopped flowing, or was flowing really slow. I pulled over thinking there was air trapped somewhere, and blew into the vent. That didn’t do any good, and now I was down to 1 bar with 40 miles to go before Hanksville. Maybe a clogged filter, but I wasn't about to unbolt the mess and dick with it with the sun going down in the middle of the UT desert. I figured I could make it to Hankville if I took it easy on the throttle, or worst case if I did run out of gas, I could take the whole mess apart and manually dump the aux fuel into the main tank. Ig blew by me doing his happy wave. Foocker
. Rolled into the Hole in the mountain gas station with 20 miles showing on the reserve count-up meter. Gassed up and headed west.It’s dark by the time I get to the next NP, Capital Reef. I’m wondering when I’m going to start feeling the effects of 3 hours sleep the night before (never really felt tired until I rolled into the hotel at the finish; I guess the rally kept my mind occupied enough to not think about sleep). Grabbed pix of the Capital Reef sign and the Behuin bonus down the road. At first it took several tries to get a decent night pic, but that got better as the night went on.
Sailed through Torrey on my way to the Bryce NP. My ETA back to SLC was a few minutes past the cutoff, but I wasn’t too concerned yet; I figured I'd make up some time on I15 once I got the Zion pic. When I got to Loa I realized that for some reason my GPS didn’t route me through Hwy 12 like I had originally designed the route; it must’ve recalc’ed at some point and now it wanted to send me to 89 via Koosharem instead. Crap, shoulda been paying closer attention, that just added a few minutes to my ETA. I cut south through Antimony and reeled a few minutes back in by the time I pulled into Bryce to get the pic.
Didn't need to, but stopped for gas as my aux still wasn’t flowing very fast. Found one station in Bryce that had pay at the pump, stuck my card in and was denied! Twice! WTF??? It just worked in Hanskville. (Didn’t think to try a different card, lol). Maybe it’s the pump, I muttered inside my Shoei, I’ve got enough to get me down the hill to Zion, I’ll try getting gas there. Said Hi to a few packs of deer grazing alongside the road, no worries, the 4GHIDs zapped 'em a long ways back. Got to the gas at the Zion turn off, and was denied again! Now I’m getting pissed. Tried a different card, and viola. On the horn to BofA, and sure enough, they’d shut my card down due to possible fraudulent activity – buying gas in several cities in the last 24 hours is apparently the typical M.O. of credit card thieves. Oh, yeah, I'd completely neglected to notify them I was travelling, and not to sweat multiple purchases over the next 24 hrs. I assured them the purchases were legit, and they gave me back access to my money. Went into Zion to grab a pic of the sign, and now I had all the pics needed for the NP bounus:
Thought about grabbing a bonus west of Cedar City, but had just under 4 hours to make it back to SLC, and didn’t want to chance a DNF. Plotted a course west out of Zion, to get me onto I15 where posted limits are 75-80, which I was relatively confident my little Gen2 could eek out. But wait, RB had one more surprise...that damn road out of Zion !@#$. The paved parts were bad enough, 15-20mph, but a good chunk of Hwy 9 was torn up for construction, and the best I could do that late in the game was 5-10 mph. I’d avoided cursing the RB up to that point, but could abstain no longer ;-). Actually even considered calling in saying I might be a few minutes late.
Now on I15, the FJR vectored north, Creedence cued up in my helmet, my ETA started magically dropping, giving me several minutes to spare. Made a quick stop in Scipio to grab a six-pack beverage and a receipt for a small bonus there. Kid at the counter said they don’t have six packs of any beverage, but that they did have six packs of donuts, which he assured me would be acceptable. Now I just gotta keep her between the ditches, keep my envelope intact, and I'd be home free.
Rolled into the SLC city limits as the sun was coming up, beautiful. Pulled up to the hotel at 6:40am, feeling like a bag of smashed assholes. But I had finished, and was happy about that. Found out my six-pack donuts didn't satisfy the bonus requirement; the rally pack specifically stated "beverage". Dang, that'll teach me to listen to some kid at a gas station. Did the scoring, turned in my receipts and rally pack, then went to my room for a shower and sleep. Woke up hungry enough to eat the balls off a low flying duck...and Mr. Chalmers didn't dissapoint with a first class buffet and open bar at the awards banquet.
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In retrospect, my decision to go for the NP's turned out to be sound, it allowed me to skip bonuses (Arches GPS, Cedar City) and adjust my route depending on how I was doing on time. I've got a shitload of things I'll be working on before the next one.
Finishing Stats:
- 23 hrs., 40 min.
- 1398.3 corrected miles
- 71,142 points
- 12th place
