Well, that was FUN! Ira and staff put together an interesting puzzle, where we had to claim EXACTLY 9 bonii, each worth either positive and negative points. The winner was whoever got closest to zero points. No obvious (to me) clustering of optimal points, except that positive bonii were north of I40 and negative south of I140.
I was up well past 2am trying to find a low point combo with reasonable miles, but best I could muster was (-1286) points (1105 miles ridden) for 17th place out of 50 (?) some-odd finishers. For reference, first place (Jim Owen) knocked it out of the park with (-58) points 1140 miles(I'm officially in AWE!!!).
Had a ton of fun riding to places I had no clue existed, e.g. the world's biggest pistachio nut near Alamogordo. Weather was mostly cooperative, cool in the north, hot/windy in the south, and about 20 minutes of riding through dime-sized (ouch!) hail going through Cloudcroft.
Congrats to all who participated!