You know what? Routing at home is much easier than routing in a frickin' hotel room. I make better decisions and come up with brilliant plans that couldn't possibly go wrong at home. In a Marriott? Completely different kettle of fish. Scoring is the same way for some reason, dammit...
As last night's Mr. Higdon report outlined, there were two routes capable of yielding big points: Northern, through BC. And Southern, through KW. The two routes are actually fairly close in mileage: 5050 for the North and 5123 for South. Points are fairly close too with 34607 for North and 33931 for South. There are some possible extra points for both routes but I would imagine either route will yield some wild eyed finishers riding past 2-500 point bonii to avoid penalty time or worse.
There is a 5000 point bonus on Vancouver Island but it involves 3-4 hours of ferry time on a leg that 10 minutes is crucial. Probably not doable. If one could manage that, the total for the Northern Route becomes 39607. A real game changer. {Warchild note: think Iggy knows a thing or two about these PNW ferries, and how they *really* operate? }
The big difference between the numbers The Esteemed Mr. Higdon posted up and mine (somewhat less esteemed) is I've included a loop through the San Francisco Bay Area good for 6100 points. Anybody doing the Northern Route would have to do this because they would waste several hours waiting for the bonii in the Seattle area to go live. Might as well make the time count for something and take the easy points.
The Southern route would have to include the bonii in LA totalling some 2000 points but missing out on a time constrained 2300 pointer that's not available until Wednesday morning. I don't imagine we'll be seeing that one on anybody's scoring sheet.
I think either route has places the rider can operate at Higdon 2-3 vein speeds with impunity but the South probably has more of them. A factor in a rider's decision twist it hard is the interest by IBR PtB to have us keep it in our shorts. It is quite easy to monitor a rider's speed by either the bonus sheet or SPOT tracking. I think it's covered in the rule book under II.A.1: "Safety: The Iron Butt Rally is dedicated to the sport of safe, long-distancemotorcycle riding. It does not condone, nor will it tolerate, unsafe activities such asexcessive speed"...and so on. There are other things under II.A that can also be brought to bear upon the miscreant rider...
One thing we can be absolutely sure of: The Southern route will be much hotter and the ride much less entertaining. It would be a difficult decision for me to make whether to go to KW or BC if the KW ride had much more points. I'd probably do it but it wouldn't be a happy day.
We'll know shortly if the "Nut Job" as Mr. White put it (and I agreed with), was really onto something. Looks like he was the only rider to go to KW. His decision may have been influenced by his departure time from RC, though.
