This is the text version. See the fully formatted version including pictures at Matt's Utah 1088 Story
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This story is about my build-up to the Utah 1088. This rally event is held annual and is the single longest running motorcycle rally in the world. If when you hear "rally" you think of Harley dudes meeting Sturgis like a ride-in--then this is a completely different version of a rally.
This rally is competitive.
It's not a race though either. It is about riding a long distance for a long time, searching for bonuses (bonii) like a treasure hunt, and being efficient at stopping, going, and thinking while on the move.
Enjoy.
Matt
Prologue - The Build -Up
October 2004
I applied for my first competitive rally. Drawn as number 59 of 75 riders--the Utah 1088 in June 2005 promises to be a kick in the butt!
January 2005
I received my Utah 1088 Rally Rules.
March 2005
There's a hazy shape in my mind's eye that is the Utah 1088. I've read the pre-rally notes multiple times, but there's nuance I don't quite yet grasp in Steve Chalmer's carefully crafted words like a teaser to a play. In fact, I feel life like a high school freshman reading a college play. I read the words, comprehend the odd simile and forced metaphor, but somehow I don't yet know the arc of the lead character. I haven't a clue how the play ends.
But that's OK. It adds to the excitement, because I'm the character in this "more than two checkpoint" play. The Utah 1088 promises to be the most dynamic play there can be. The script will start at dawn at a bland cookie-cutter hotel in Salt Lake City where a sea of long-distance prepped motorcylerly sit parked and quiet. (There'd be morning dew in this imagery if it were not for being the desert and summer).
I know there will be a frenzy in the first act as everybody rallies off. And, I also know there will be a symbolic intermission at some yet-to-be-known point perhaps in an adjoining state. And the final act will undoubtedly be written in fatigue and road scmutz in the coming of the second dawn.
I signed up for the Utah 1088 on great advice from the star senior in my metaphorical class. Magna Cum LDR, Dale (Warchild) Wilson is a work colleague and one of the most interesting pony-tailed fellas you'll ever run across. His riding is legendary, heart the size of an ox, and huge contributor to the Yamaha FJR community. He reminds of a cross between a Jedi and a Hells Angel.
He recommended the Utah 1088 as the classiest of rallies, doable, I signed up in October and when the check cleared it suddenly hit me. I'm a newbie entered into the finest 24 hour rally in existence.
Meanwhile, I drift off to sleep each night mentally practicing my trapping skills. Chalmers has to be kidding.....probably.
May 2005
I received an updated Newsletter.
June 2005
With oil freshly changed, gadgets procured, and reservations lined up I set my goals for the event.
Finish the event. Don't get a DNF.
Do it safely. Don't splat or get splatted.
Don't get any speeding tickets. I've have a spotless record for 14 years and want to keep it that way.
Anything beyond these three goals would be gravy.
Chapter 1 - Getting There Is Half the Fun
Wednesday, June 22
I got out of Pasco at about 8:30 and the ride down I-84 to Utah is pretty uneventful (that's code for boring). Part of me wanted to cut off the Superslab at Twin Falls, Idaho and take the two-laner through Jackpot, Wells, and Wendover, but I had dinner plans with my high school friend and fellow councilmember, Jim Perry, in Cedar Hills, Utah. Jim and I have kept in loose contact since high school, but coincidence had struck both of us in 2003 as we both ran for and won councilmember seats of our respective communities. Also coincidentally we had both purchase new motorcycles within a month or so together. Neither fact did we figure out until talking to each other later.
Me visiting him while I was in Utah was an important matter so I had to hastily get down the road, through SLC traffic, and 720 miles later I was in Cedar Hills pulling out my cell phone for last block instructions when a lanky guy rides by on a bad-ass Buell.
2005 Buell Lightning XB12S
As he flipped a U to investigate this non-LDS interloper I quickly realized it was my buddy and waved. I followed him home and we spent dinner and the evening catching up on bike, politics, religion, and life in general. Regrounded to my old friend I was pleasantly surprised that our different paths of life were still tempered by more common interest than different.
Thursday, June 23
Jim, his wife, Zonda, and children are the most gracious of hosts and they put me up for the night. Jim even took the morning off work to go for a ride. So up Provo Canyon we went, booked on by past Sundance up the Alpine Scenic Loop, and found the twistiest road I've ever ridden with Jim leading point. He was decent rider on this little rocket of a bike and I did my best to keep up with him. Frankly, Jim and the bike were better through the corner than I was and I'd twist the throttle to catch back up in the straights.
By 10 a.m. we were where the road ends wandering through the Aspens to a Cascade Springs. Dismounting we wandered the wooden walkways around the area. Besides the place being very geologically interesting and devoid of a single person on a Thursday--there was a very contented female moose chomping away at moss in the ponds. Boy, was I glad we had not enountered her on the road. We must have watched her for 10 minutes scarcely 50 feet away.
Descending back down the mountains Jim and I switched bikes for a few miles on the main road. I immediately noticed how rough the V-twin idled to life, but once underway a very torquey and snappy experience. With no fairing or windshield I felt more like I was sitting in front of the handlebars compared to the touring-like FJR. Jim's comments of the FJR was how smooth and quiet it was and how tubby it felt. But, he did say he was surprised when corners came up how easily leaned over and well it made it through for being a barge.
This stellar ride was an unexpected bonus and reminded me of the two years of college I spent in Utah. Incredible natural resources and scenery 15 minutes away from civilization and very few people around using it.
Chapter 2 - On Your Marks
Back by about noon I said my goodbyes and motored back up to SLC and arrived at the Holiday Inn hotel that would be rally HQ. The parking lot had a half dozen motorcycles already parked including Warchild's Blackbird. I eased the FJR in backwards next to him and smiled that this event prided itself in encouraging new participants. Newbie rookie and seasoned veteran park next to each other without giving it a second thought.
Checked in and luggage unpacked unceremoniously on the room floor, I returned to the parking lot and spent the afternoon meeting new people from various corners of the country. Migrating to the bar I was reminded about the weird Utah laws and signed my temporary club membership. 3.2% microbrew beer went down tastily, but without the usual ethanol infused effect. I felt a little gypped, but probably a good collateral benefit in hindsight.
I jumped in the commandeered hotel van and headed to Steve Chalmers house for the barbeque. He introduced himself and family and welcomed us to his suburban home.
I immediately made my first rally mistake. Hankerin' a beer as were others Steve reminded us that we didn't read our pre-rally packets and it was BYOB. Damn! I'm making mistakes even before the rally starts. I'd find out it was not going to be my last mistake. Diet coke it was.
Somehow Steve's manner and style fitted my expectations. I didn't think I had any expectations and had only seen a couple pictures of him. But his manner fitted his face and writing style. Calling us all together and laying out details of the days ahead he commanded attention belying his experience as a Marine and former LA cop. He moved with a lanky walking gait where his long arms swung much farther than his foot speed seemed to imply. He was also a position talker too. He'd start a sentence standing in one spot, move 5 feet turning 180 degrees in the process, and finish his sentences with a wry smile and maximum effect on the crowd. He obviously had a soft side too.
I liked Steve immediately.
Dinner was tasty with pulled pork barbeque sandwiches and the line to mud pie t was one of military precision and discipline. Dollops of chocolate sauce made the desert the best I'd had in a long while.
Now relaxed Steve gave the group opportunity to ask serious questions about the upcoming rally and rewarded a question answered in the pre-rally packet by giving the asker a rock from his garden.
"Hold on to this. Don't lose it. You have to hold onto it for the entire rally.......But don't worry. You won't be holding it long. Somebody else will ask a dumb question soon."
This was Steve's weird way of motivating people to have pre-read material in this serious business of long-distance motorcycle rallying. The rocked changed hands many times in 15 minutes, and some even seemed eager to be rock holders.
"Where's the first checkpoint" was answered with, "Somewhere in Utah." and the rock followed.
Asked the same question "....where's the second checkpoint" and answer identical. The rock moved steadily.
Curiously, when asked the third checkpoint Steve checked up and blurted out, "New Mexico."
The crowd went silent.
I was thinking to myself, "Cool. I haven't been to New Mexico before." when another lady said exactly what was on my mind. To me, the uninitiated, Moab and Shiprock both looked similarly far away and exciting on the maps I had cursorily scanned earlier. To the veterans it had shut them up and grabbed their undivided attention.
Steve went on to talk about getting back to the roots of the event and that universally seemed to be interpreted by riders as code for "ass exhausting". Things had gotten serious for a moment and I watched intently looking for social clues.
Things lightened back up when George opened his mouth next and asked, "?????"
He was rewarded with chuckle and the rock. Steve sternly suggested that he should show up to the driver's meeting at 7 p.m. the next evening for the answer to that question. This gave me dejavu of Bender getting the bull's horns from Mr. Vernon in The Breakfast Club.
To be chastised by the Rallybastard was flattering to some. To be designated rock holder was to wear a granite badge of honor.
I had met George earlier that afternoon as he rode the same '05 Galaxy Blue FJR as I did. George struck me as a rumpled person. He and his clothes looked like they had been through the dryer and tangled up with a sheet. You know the cotton shirt that gets matted up in a fitted sheet and you leave in the dryer for two days? I reasoned that George has dishes stacked in the sink at home too because he had more important things--like ride hundreds of miles to Utah to make dinner. To me it's an endearing quality and I immediately liked him too.
I ended up getting paired with him in the golf tournament the following morning as Team FJR.
The big group waned as the light started to fade and caught a ride back with endurance riding legend Bill "Nasty Newt" Newton who had flown in from his home in Arkansas. Seems Newt had lived much of his life in Huntington Beach as a ???, but in his post-retirement had taken up a second career as a lucrative pig farmer. Another character whom I liked immediately.
Back at Rally HQ I wandered to bed surfing cable and counting motorcycles to sleep.
05:45 Friday, June 24
05:45 comes entirely too early and I try and reconcile the motorcycle logistics of going golfing. For one, you don't usually ride a motorcycle to a golf course. Carrying clubs just plain sucks. Second, I didn't have any clubs anyway. I was 630 miles from my clubs barely had remembered a tooth brush. Third, I wasn't sure with this group if it was bad from to ride in tennis shoes, shorts, and t-shirt down the road two miles or if we were expected to don full gear.
Being a newbie and remembering the rally pack that not wearing protective gear in the rally I went the conservative route and put on everything. Traveling down I-80 to the exit next door I was in the parking lot with motorcycle boots shucked before I realized I forgot my tennis shoes in the room.
Frack! 6 minutes until tee off and I'm late. No way am I doing 9 holes in Oxtar Matrix boot now matter how comfortable they are. Don gear, ride at an elevated rate back to the hotel, get shoes, and ride back to the golf course.
Check-in was relatively quick and a bargain where I come from at green fees, cart, and rental clubs costing only $26. Resting in the cart with a breakfast burrito I wait for George to show up. He does show up at 6:30 with that look like he'd spent the night in the dryer again.
The 9 holes were fun having met Quek Cheng Chye. Chye (pronounced just like the popular Starbucks drink) was a sushi chef by day and object of Bob Higdon notes in the 2003 IBR about loud exhausts. Yet another character in this crowd. I was starting to feel positively middling.
The golf course teased George and I as we pulled down scrambling pars the first two holes. By the third hole though we showed our true golfing colors and began posting erratically with triple-bogeys interspersed with more pars. Hole 8 all four of us imploded and we pushed the reset button on the tee blocks--our only obvious cheating I can recall.....or will disclose. Is it true all I really ever needed to learn in the Utah 1088 is in golf the day before?
Posting a 45 George and I felt positively bogey and I think simultaneously returned to our hotel rooms for naps. It was a good thing too. 2 hours of nap that afternoon made good book-ends to the 6 hours of sleep I'd end up getting that night. 8 hours of decent sleep before the rally ended up being a VERY good thing.
Before I bedded down I went through tech. inspection and it was largely self directed. Not having a fuel cell I was left to affirm I had all the requisite pieces including first aid kit, flares, tools, well maintained bike, and decent tires. We also did a pre-determined loop to adjust speedometers and I came in at 15.5 miles vs. the standard of 15.3. My GPS said 15.24 as an anal factoid.
All Friday afternoon and early evening riders went about fiddling with their motorcycles. Some, like myself, organized bits here and there tweaking non system critical pieces. I Velcroed on a new indoor/outdoor thermometer and countdown timer I had bought at Wal-Mart earlier. I had metaphorically stepped over dead puppies to buy these goodies as my mentor, Warchild, had lamented the day prior when buying similar sweat-shop produced goods.
I also set about Windexing only the lights and mirrors on the buck careful to avoid the layer of bug splats and grime I had accumulated the past 700 miles when on queue I curtly heard behind me, "A clean bike is a gay bike."
Classic Warchild.
I stammered out something completely unmemorable when I should have said, "Yes Obi Wan. I am merely cleaning the emitters of my light saber so it works better. I remain mindful of the motorcycle Force."
....maybe next time.
Chapter 3 - Get Set
19:00 Saturday
Chalmers called the cast and crew together for the first official meeting. Much of the beginning material was updates or expansion upon the ideas within the pre-rally pack....which I had actually rescanned that afternoon.
Then he dropped a bombshell.
"Look to the person next to you and introduce yourself."
We did.
Steve spoke head down as if at a funeral, "I expect we'll have a 50% attrition rate this year. I think only 1/2 of you are going to finish this event."
Another stunned quiet silence......followed by loud staccato chatter from every. I immediately said to Dale mockingly, "Dude! That sucks that you're not going to finish."
His eyes rolled around and he retorted, "Yeah, whatever! We'll see if you say the same thing in 24 hours...fish."
We heard a bunch more details and I filed away the notes mentally. One that confused me was what units the GPS bonii were in. My GPS is set to decimal degrees--meaning a degree amount followed by a decimal number (ddd.nnnn). Steve said they'd be in degree, minutes, and seconds (ddd mm' ss'), but don't worry about seconds. Weird, but whatever. Turns out the next day they were in degrees decimal minutes (ddd mm.nnn). If fact it ended up being a post rally discussion between John Langan and myself where corrected my inaccurate use of "degrees minutes decimal" being a surveyor. Shows how much I remembered from my college experience as a surveyor
Thanks John.
Afterwards I headed to eat some dinner and wolfed down a bowl full of seafood pasta. It was good Shortly after I headed to bed and was asleep a couple hours later by midnight.
I woke up at 5:45 and headed to the cafe for some light breakfast. I was actually surprised by the people packing away serious food so figured my colon would want to rid itself of the previous night's pasta--so why not hurry things along with a little bit of morning grease.
It worked well and I went over last minute mental preparation while on the throne. I couldn't think of any gaping holes in my preparation and personally declared my bike saddled up ready by 06:45. I also had my laptop fired up with MS Streets and Trips as an aid to the packet I was about to get.
Chapter 4 - GO!
07:00
The final drivers meeting and was very anticlimactic. Can't even remember anything critical and we got our packets about 5 minutes later.
As Chalmers plopped down the sequentially numbered packets, "1, 2, 3, 4...." Cordura swathed ants scooped up their manilla packets and scurried back to their rooms. The starting line would open in 55 minutes and about a million dollars of motorcycles, gadgets, and Camelbaks would be shooting out of the parking lot in all directions.
I opened the packet and ignored the alternate routes listed and tried to get my mind around the format of the legs, checkpoints, and bonii. I had been schooled previously, but my lack of internalizing secondary Utah road numbers confused me immediately. Since the legs didn't have mileage on them I couldn't construct in my mind a 2D map of where I was supposed to go.
I did take one piece of advice offered by George Zelenz and Brian Roberts and immediately circled on my AAA map in pen the checkpoints and times they were open. I had these three dots of information if nothing else.
I noticed bits and pieces of useful facts about individual bonuses, but even after a full hour I couldn't imagine the route in my minds eye. I knew the checkpoints were Heber, Moab, and Scipio and Streets and Trips helped a little bit by making routes all over the place, but it seemed centered more on trying to route you on 4 lane big roads. This was the exact thing I noticed when reading previous year's riding accounts and I full expect that as a reader you're about to be similar confused by my account.
I'm going to try and simplify things a bit for you though. If for the next few chapters you do nothing else--try and think of the rally as 4 legs of the following map:
Salt Lake City to Heber This leg was relatively short. Checkpoint was open in 3 hours--a mere 1/8 of the rally in time southwest of SLC.
Heber to Moab - 6 p.m. was mostly fast two lane headed mostly south and west near the Colorado border. The leg was from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and received the severe heat of the day in open high plains and dry lake beds. At 7 hours it was the average length leg.
Moab to Scipio was the long meat of the rally heading due south, curving north into the wide open mesas and valleys, west up the moutains, south again, and yet another slow curve through more dark mountains into the wee hours of the morning back to civilization and I-15. At 10 hours this section was when the rest of the world sleeps and crazed motorcyclists are churning serious miles.
Scipio to SLC wasn't just a straight shot back up I-15 but bypassed the Provo/SLC mess by shooting you west through some technical secondary roads, by sleepy subdivisions, and out into the surreal world of the Dugway proving grounds. Roads out here are Euclidian straight being built by the Army with vast tracts of land, but are also the toughest because you're tired, exhausted, and have the false sense of security of being close to the barn. At 4 hours it's technically short, but the dawning morning reminds you that you've been up for at least 24 hours straight.
i
2005 Utah 1088 Base Route
I sat there in my room puzzling over the first leg unable to decide which ones to go after. I did highlight in yellow what I believed to be the main route, but I knew there was no way I could get my mind around the whole thing. Paralyzed, I even went past the 8 a.m. starting line opening from advice in previous years that spending 15 minutes extra in the room might help.
But shrewdness was giving away to the feeling of floundering. So, I decided to just look at one piece of the elephant mess and focused on a 6,000 point GPS bonus was up near Evanston, Wyoming. In my mind's eye I could estimate that distance as I had bootlegged good Wyoming beer about 15 years earlier while attending college at Weber in Ogden. This was going to be my first bite of the day long elephant. It was my sole hook to the reality of road that lay outside my room.
Out to the parking lot I went where it felt strange that about 60 of the riders had disappeared. A few milled around like myself.
Out of the parking lot I rode and secretly breathed a sigh of relief after I rolled past the 0.7 mile mark. I had heard the horror story the night before of a rider rear-ending a car less than a mile into the 2004 rally because the car had the audacity to stop at a stop sign in front of him. No way did I want to be this sort of statistic.
I rode west on I-70 and hoped that the rally would make more sense as I went along. As my goals were to finish and I was traveling the pace of traffic I still thought I could do this thing. In fact, I rode by an exit that I thought I recognized as a bonus, but missed it. Sure enough I saw several riders looking at a gun range sign. I'd come back by if I had time for this 600 pointer.
My GPS clicked off the miles as I droned up I-70. The day was spectacularly beautiful and the morning air felt great. I exited at 193 in the middle of nowhere and surmised the bonus (a UDOT water tank) was on the south side of the freeway. Since the only road was a gravel one up a hill I motored up it unafraid and expecting serious bonii would require serious riding.
Passing a skull and cross bones sign with some Hazmat-like H2S writing on it I figured I was going away from the bonus and went back down the road. A trail off the gravel road with a weed patch up the center called my name and I ventured down that fiasco for a few hundred yards.
As I crested the hill I could see a half mile away the freeway and an old style water tower on the north side of the freeway.
Not good for my first bonus. Here I am in lost in the Tulies--which made me laugh because I wondered if the expression actually meant lost in Tooele, Utah.
Unable to find a turn-around I knew my FJR was definitely not a V-Strom dual sport even if I've commandeered a set of hand guards from one.
Phukit! I'm turning anyway and did my best V-Strom impersonation possible. The rear end spun wide, I rammed through a sagebrush, and smelled it instantly. I road back down the hill and crossed under the freeway to the bonus location as I noticed, coincidentally, a V-Strom, with Mike Thibideau parked at the bonus. Nodding I pulled out the Polaroid and examined the bonus description, old tank, and suspiciously a poly plastic 1,000 tank next to the building. Remembering they call Chalmers the Rallybastard I carefully framed the picture to include both tanks just in case he was as a hard-ass as his reputation.
Remounting the bike I began to unwind the miles of I-80 to Park City. I went passed and picked up the gun range bonus and chastised myself for having to do 14 extra miles when I could have gotten the bonus earlier. It would be my first mistake of many, but at least I now was on the board with about 6 or 7 thousand points.
Checkpoint #1 - 11:30 - Heber - Mile 0155
The Heber checkpoint opened at 11:00, but I could tell I was going to be about a 1/2 hour after that. Not an immediate problem as the checkpoint was open until 12:30, but I really had no idea of how the rest of the rally would work. I hoped I was not losing ground and getting in a hole, but it just seemed like after Heber there was not a ton of miles before getting to Moab.
So, I took the time at the gun range stop to transcribe some of the bonus information from the rally pack inside my tank bag to some 3"x5" note cards I had purchased the day before.
It worked pretty well as I stopped in Heber for another picture bonus right on the route. The stop went smoothly and I was underway again as I looked for the checkpoint
Chalmers was there himself and waved me in. As he initialed my forms he thanked me for wearing Joe Rocket gear. Seems his job was being a distributor for the line along with HJC helmets and other gear. Who knew?
Munching a granola bar I headed out of Heber on 40 and wondered if I'd ever see any other riders.
My wish was rewarded and I think I first ran into John Langan. John rides a Goldwing like it's a sport bike and I think I remembered a reference to this veteran in reading about the Ironbutt. John is missing several digits on his throttle hand, but if anything his shortage of phalanges seems to have sped this guy up. Behind him I found my rate of travel increasing from moderate to an "elevated" status.
I had learned the term elevated from Chalmers at the driver's meeting the evening before as a preferred adjective to describing velocity when writing rally accounts. It seems describing speeds in specific, concrete unit terms like miles per hour is considered bad form. I'll leave it to the reader to interpret these adjectives and merely suggest that not once does any Utah 1088 competitor ever exceed the speed limit. .....nuff said.
The scenery of the high desert gave way to alkali flats and straight stretches of increasing afternoon heat. With a veteran cruising in front of me I suddenly didn't feel lost anymore and my confidence improved dramatically. I even queried my GPS for the as-the-crow-flies miles to a 600 point bonus to Steamboat Springs. I immediately dismissed it as one of the "sucker bonus" I had read about. While seeming obvious that hundreds of additional miles just didn't make mathematical sense for the point reward I bet Chalmers knew that we riders would agonize over them with nothing else to do on desolate streches of road. I just didn't go for the bait as I muttered my mantra, "Finish, safely, no tickets......"
Zooming along I suddenly found myself at I-70 and gassed up in Green River. As I gassed I realized I had missed a weirdly signed bonus where the milepost markers seemed out of order. Not wanting to go back I made a guess at the answer since a plethora of road signs were across the street. I figured I had a 50/50 shot of getting a right one (I guessed wrong by the way).
I lost sight of John and ther riders, but continued on more confidently riding solo. Somehow I knew I'd catch up with them in Moab.
I also read about a 2,800 bonus coming up at Arches National Park. This one looked meaty, but I couldn't tell how far off the main route it was. Our mission was to pay admission to the park, crawl along behind tourists until we got to Delicate Arch, hike in, get a picture, and unwind whatever we'd gotten ourself into. Chalmers warned that "every tourist west of the Rockies" was going to be in this park at this time of day, but being about 9 miles from the Moab checkpoint with 3 hours to kill what else was I going to do, but be a rat running through the maze?
I entered the park right behind a BMW and asked the ranger how far into Delicate Arch--I'm sure the exact same question as the rider in front of me.
From memory he rattled off, "13 miles in is the turn off. Another mile is the parking lot. 2 1/2 hour hike in and out."
My heart sank as it was hot, I was in black gear, and would have to lug my tank bag full of expensive goodies.
He added at the last second, "Or......... another mile in is another parking lot and it's then a 4 minute hike to a vantage point you can take a picture."
Hmmmmmm? My spirit buoyed.
The road started a 25 mph switchback mess and Winnebegos infested it's length. Once on top of the bluff I was able to pass some cars and settled in at a moderate pace through the most beautiful scenery I had scene in a long time.
Picture I Did Not Take....But Is Very Cool
Courtesy of Tony Scavo Photography
The view of rocks, arches and bluffs made me think that any moment a Road Runner would scoot by in a puff of smoke or an anvil would land on a coyote. First moment I saw an Acme brand box on the side of the road I was going to turn around and whack the throttle in the other direction....
13 miles later I made the ranger prescribed turn and went past the first parking lot. I saw several bikes parked and tried to remember the specific details of the written bonus. Second parking lot and I parked pulling out the bonus sheet and lamented the seemingly specific directions about parking in the first lot and hiking to the arches for a picture.
Again I knew I was making progress on my goal of finishing and not worrying so much about the bonus I decided to go ahead and get the picture from here. I didn't think the points would count, but no way am I hiking the full mess. Even the four minute hike in black Joe Rocket gear, heat, and tank bag under arm was more taxing than I suspected. Tourists eyeballed me and even asked what the heck I was carrying.
Taking the picture of the stunning, if not smallish, arches in the far distance I began my trip back down and ran across veterans Brian Roberts and Jeff Earls hiking the other way sans tankbags (smart veterans). I wondered aloud to them lamenting that we probably wouldn't get the points, but Jeff said he had asked Chalmers in the morning before leaving (smart thinking guy who reads and digests his packet) and he thought Chalmers was OK with it...or at least cryptic in response.
Fine. If I'm flailing this bonus--at least I'm going down in flames with two other veterans.
Repacking the bike a weather front of wind started blowing over me. The dropped temperature felt good, but having been in Utah for a few days it seemed like afternoon thunderstorms were becoming the norm and this didn't bode well for the next few hours.
Checkpoint #2 - Moab 16:45 - Mile 0430
Out of the park I rode the 10 or so miles into the interesting named little berg of Moab. It wasn't even 5 p.m. and I knew the checkpoint wasn't open for quite a while so I decided to stop for some dinner at McDonalds and try and transcribe more bonii onto note cards because the method was working out so well for me. With about a third of the rally over I was feeling more and more confident.
Seeing Chye and Mike roll in, eat, and spread out maps on tables just reinforced that I was getting the hang of rallies.
17:45
I rolled out McD's. I had added one Big and Tasty to my stomach and minus one Big and Floaty in their bathroom. We were square in my book.
I rolled into a Chevron on the south edge of town not needing fuel, but needing some air in the rear tire. One goof I had made was not check the tire pressure the night before and somehow on the few days since leaving Pasco it had gone down from 42 psi cold to about 39 psi hot. Not sure of conversions hot and cold I just aired it to 42 psi knowing the 7 pounds would help.
I also refilled the CamelBak with straight ice that had held out most of the day and threw away some wrappers and trash I had accumulated. Checkpoint opened at 6 p.m. and Bill ??? signed initials quickly while the several dozen troops rolled out for the long, night leg. I knew this was going to be a serious leg.
Rolling out there was obviously a pretty good pack of riders scattered about. I remember seeing Brian Roberts, Jim Owen, Jeff Earls, the Young brothers on FJR and BMW, and various other riders I hadn't fully met yet. There was a whole series of picture bonii between Moab and Blanding--my next gas stop.
One bonus was Hole in the Rock tourist trap and from what I could tell it bore no breathtaking value whatsoever. The gimmick seemed to be huge painted letters pointing to this tiny spot on the rock face. I was reminded of the maps that say, "You are here" only this one was on a 1:1 scale. What impressed me though was being ahead of Jim Owen, me stopping, thinking I was pretty quick at taking off one glove, shooting a picture, writing information down information on the picture and packet with the red Sharpie I had smartly velcroed onto the dash, and putting the material all back in less than two minutes. Owen had rolled in 30 seconds after I did and rolled out 15 seconds before me. This 2004 winner was a bonus machine!
Another bonus, Newspaper Rock, was off the main road and those that headed towards the more menacing clouds to the west. To the civilians at the parking lot it must have seemed like they were being invaded by Cordura swathed Borg. We walked with jerky determinaton (actually it was road weary stiffness) to the rune encrusted rock without uttering a word or taking off our helmets? And each one carried the same black plastic piece of antiquated technology, and all would shoot an identical, hasty shot of the rock. The Polaroids looked in stark contrast to gaggle of technology that grew out of our bikes.
And not only did we retreat from the rock silently as if we were all connected by telephathy, but more Borg mounted bikes appeared to backfill the scene and repeat the process.
The civilians were lucky and remain unassimilated. They would have a story to tell their friends as they watched the troops scurry back to their mother ship.
We made it back to the main road and passed through Monitcello scooping up the entry sign bonus and kept the speedos right on the speed limit. We were far from the highways patrolled by the USP and locals have a reputation for not being forgiving of those that flout the posted safety signs. Rumor has it that a few of our brethren were cautioned by the local cops about their undisciplined throttle hands. A misunderstanding I'm sure....
After Monitcello things got a bit dicey. The threatening sky changed it's horizontal composure and turned itself vertical into a menacing wall of black and gray. Car traffic slowed down to a crawl and the double yellow no passing stripes conspired against our two wheeled clan. Then the lightning started. Big bolts across wide swaths of sky. Big spidery bolts followed by big booms scarcely a second later. Fat droplets of rain smelled dusty and felt warm to the touch.
Then things got interesting.......
The sky wall opened up to pour water on us in sheets. George Swetland would later pronounced it "Biblical Rain".
The UDOT also seemed to have a sense of humor and pulled the asphalt out from under our wheels. Orange cones and small streams of flash run-off crossed the gravel mess--all the while panicking a civilian into slowing down to a walking pace and turning on their hazards. What is that about? Turn on your hazards and stack up dozens of vehicles behind you as if to say, "I'm scared to bejeezuz and you should be too. Not only will I block you, but I'll call attention to the fact that I forgot traffic safety in high school and won't pull over."
Being on point I was supposed to determine when to safely pass, but when buckets of water are being thrown in your face you can't decide whether it's safer to try and peer out between rain covered visor and windshield through rain covered glasses, or just close the whole thing up, pull over, and cry, "Mommy!"
Finally, we made it through the meatiest part of the water wall and a straight stretch of asphalt opened up. Myself and a dozen kindred blipped on by poor old Noah and his 15 mph Chevy ark. Putz!
Blanding, UT came up and it was time to gas up, dry the visor, change into rain bottoms, and think about the upcoming night time of cold, elevation, and twisty roads.
Rolling out of Blanding I saw the local constabulary eyeing myself and other two-wheeled strangers with a bit of suspicion. Careful to obey the local limits I'd find out later that he was actually a friendly local and extremely tolerant of several brethren whom were confused about the limits. To get a warning at +/- 80% of the posted limit makes me think Blanding is nice little berg to revisit and spend some tourist dollars.
South a few miles of Blanding I ran across Mark and and Thomas Young at the intersection of ???? stopped and talked to them for a minute. I was wondering if they were considering the Kayenta, AZ bonus, but they weren't. I wasn't sure exactly which road I should take to Kayenta so sort of resolved that if I saw a sign headed that way I'd think about diverting off.
About 10 miles on farther I had that sinking feeling....."Why were they stopped back at the intersection? Writing down bonus information. Dang!" Looking at my note card I saw it was worth 600 points and worth it to turn around. Hauling butt I passed them and a half dozen other riders. I'm sure the veterans thought, "Newbie." as I blurred by and newbies probably thought, "Should I be going that way?" in a similarly blurred state.
Back at the intersection I wrote down the information, flogged myself mentally for the screw up, and noticed that my "hair was on fire" as Bryan Roberts so eloquently noted in his write-up. I rode into the twilight at an elevated rate. Catching back up over the course of tens of miles I spot some bikes pulled over at another intersection with hazards on so I slow down and stop. Asking if everything is all right they said they're just logging the bonus. "How many miles to Hanksville?", they say.
What? That's the other intersection I tell them, but they're not biting.
Dang. They were right and I had backtracked for nothing. Two rookie moves in a row. No wonder my hair is on fire.
I shook it off and continued traveling at my elevated pace. Something about wanting to be with the main pack made my throttle hand bend at a peculiar angle in the late evening hours. It certainly was the road for it. Oncoming traffic could be counted in terms of 2 or 3 passing cars per hour. The scenery was breathtaking as the shadows got longer.
Somewhere about Glenn Canyon I had made up the distance and passed Mark and Thomas to show them my burning hair. A sole BMW rider was also probably similarly impressed and disturbed at the horsies available in the FJR.
Fortunately, it started to rain shortly after that and put my fire out. Mark and Thomas caught back up and we entered the Captiol Reef area with lots of bonuses and it was pitch black. I arrived at the Entering Capitol Reef sign first and was just getting done taking it's picture when I realized there was a second much more handsome carved sign 100 yards farther. Tapping brake lights I suggested they try taking a picture of the latter one. Another rookie minute wasted.
A picture of a cabin a couple miles later and another similar wooden cabin that happened to be a school. Our collective driving lights did a pretty good job at illuminating Polaroids for later inspection by Chalmers. There were some seriously meaty points in this stretch and it made sense because one would have to travel hours from nowhere to get here.
The critters were also coming out too at this point and I made hasenpfeffer out of a suicidal bunny. This is my first rabbit hit and under advice from the resident wildlife snuffer, Warchild, you just don't do anything at all when you see bunnies. Hold straight and 99% of the time they don't do any damage to the bike. "Fwunk-funk.", is the noise you should hear and feel.
There was also a black piece of trash that seemed to move in the breeze that avoided identification until I was 30 feet away I recognized the white stripe on it's back. It seemed to hunker down in my bright lights just as I did a quick jog to the right. It missed my left peg and toe by an inch or two. The prospect of a hitting a skunk mine hadn't been in my vocabulary before. Great! One more hitch in the badlands of Southern Utah.
Other comical critters included Mark remarking at a bonus stop around midnight, "See all those frogs?"
To which I replied confused, "Frogs? Huh? No, but I remember a bunch of mice."
Mark had been riding for 20 hours straight like the rest of us and I could see the image shift crawl across his face. He said slowly, "I guess they COULD be mice...." You see, the mind of a successful Utah 1088 rider is actually like Play-Doh. It's malleable and subject to subtle tricks. I could have told him they were desert cockroaches and bet he would have bought it.
Finally, there were the forest rats. I was pretty fortunate and only had one that was even close. At 30 mph one decided to run along aside me at a 20 mph gallop. I immediately noticed how tall these deer. They must be corn fed or taking growth hormones or something. It startled me looking UP at the deer beside me and and I grunted out loud my surprise at their size, proximity, and how shiny their eye was. The deer flinched at my grunt.
We quickly changed our vectors and parted company.
I could sense this night stage was mile after mile of intense beauty. It's just a shame I couldn't see but what was within my light beam. ....except for one particular section of road that got my attention which in hindsight I'm glad I couldn't see.
One gets used to mountain riding and the regularity of either trees on both sides or trees/mountainside to one side and guardrail/drop off to the other. You focus your life in the light beam and all is good. You take in the ying of the traffic signs adjusting speeds accordingly--and yang as if you have a subtle connection to the original road designer and the flow of their road design. It was a quite predictable 60 mph road with 35 corners, and it became my routine.
.....then suddenly there was a giant sign warning of 14% grade and 25 mph limit. I slowed down well ahead of the sign more of surprise than anything. It just seemed out of place from the flow.
As I crested a small hill it struck me how the headlight illuminated not only the immediate road, but the extremely snaky S curves of the road for the next half mile. Where were the trees at? Neither side had any trees? That's weird. But even weirder was the fact that neither side of the road had any earth stacked up vertically beyond it. It's like the road was elevated above a marsh and I could only see the brush as it tapered off 50 feet into blackness. And there was no guardrail. My neck hair stood on end.
Later on I would figure out that we were on the "Hogsback" and it was a thousand feet drop down on either direction. The picture I found on the net doesn't really do it justice, but perhaps you can imagine running across the crest of this ridge in the middle of the night.
Hogsback by Day....Scarier in Person at Night
I'll have to admit I'm not sure of the roads I took past this point or which towns I gassed up in. Looking at the map the chronological order of material between Hanksville and Panguitch are a little fuzzy. I do remember it was no longer twisty and mountainous in Panguitch and seemed like a milk run up Highway 89 to the weirdly named checkpoint of of Scipio.
Scipio. Say that dozens of times in your brain after riding about a thousand miles. Scipio, scipio, sCipio, sciPio,...... What was this place? I had images of Montclair, Lyndhurst, and Ramsey, New Jersey stuck in my head. I imagined Tony Soprano and all his crew holed up in a diner waiting to whack us all because we had ratted out his new home in the witness relocation program.
I even imagined local farmer that fell overboard in the river and died, Jack Carr, was there serving coffee and telling me to tell Czebotar, "Hope you liked the hat I sent for Christmas."
Back to the puzzle of road number, I knewthat 89 seems to parallel I-15 in it's northern arc and I'm not sure whether it was wise to go west on I-70 to join up with I-15, but going that way it certainly was cold and filled with mile after mile of orange construction cones. Back on I-15 I began the drone 55 miles north and began calculating how much time I'd have to sleep. I wasn't yet too tired--which surprised me. I think the dinner and breakfast were the right choices.
Checkpoint #3 - Scipio 03:34 - Mile 1000
26 minutes of sleep it seemed as I rolled in to Scipio and parked right next to Dave McQueeny's BMW. I'd never met Dave before, but knew from reading before he's a perennial player of this and other LDR contests. I'd like to think I provided him stimulating perspective as a newbie, but being toast on a stick at that point I never even took off my helmet or ear plugs. I'm sure I sounded monotone and wore out. He might have even wondered why I headed off north away from the mini-mart into the darkness.
Instinctually from my BBG a month before I knew that a 20 minute combat nap was on my agenda and I had just enough time to do it. My choice of cardinal compass direction had purpose. I walked about 100 feet on past the concrete barriers and where the parking lot lights didn't beam straight at me. I chose a nice weed infested area that may be designated overflow parking, but nobody had been in a long time. No semis would drive over my body accidentally. The weeds even acted as shade to the yellow sodium lights.
Set at 24 minutes my Screaming Meanie was set to the highest pain threshold available and I began my slow drift into slumber about four seconds after laying down.
04:00
Apparently another rider asked where I was in the intervening time seeing my bike parked riderless, but Dave had forgotten or not seen where I went. They suddenly remembered when they heard the meanie go off somewhere out in the weeds over there in the shadows. They saw a mummy sit bolt upright and blink. He got up and shambled back over just like a mummy too.
I rejoined the living that were now getting signatures and stamps from Dave and motoring off.
I thanked Dave for the stamp and proceeded to not do anything other than take off my helmet and hang out a bit. I felt better sleeping, but needed some food and drink. Remembering from Warchild that 4 a.m. is the perfect time for a Mountain Dew I bought one and choked half of it down along with some sunflower seeds. I'm not usually into caffeine on long rides, but it was close to the end of the rally and I wasn't going to risk the nods now with the combat nap. I was rejuvenated with the four basic rally food groups. Caffeine, sugar, salt, and fat. After half of each I stowed the remains, I donned headgear and headed out.
I remember seeing Rebecca Vaughn looking remarkably fresh if not grizzled. I hadn't seen her the whole event and knowing she was an IBR contestant this year I figured she was running some super-duper veteran route and plan worth a bajillion points. I only found out later that she was actually a hard charger victim of some BMW issues, was at the shop in SLC all day, and instead of tossing in the towel made it at least to this checkpoint. Good on 'ya Becky! Besides if this sport could use anything--it's more rallying women who also happen to be beautiful.
Forging up I-15 I could see Steve was going to shoot us off the main road west before hitting Provo. I had one risky move traverse through Nephi though. Flash back about 14 years if you will when I was last on this stretch of highway. Headed to Vegas in my '78 Rabbit I encountered a Nephi LEO who insisted that 65 in a 55 just was not cool. Oddly enough I wasn't cool with getting a special award and was an interested neophyte in trying to keep my driving record clean. I stopped and talked with some junior prosecuting attorney and they assured me that the ticket was just monetary and wouldn't show up on my record.
Problem is that it did a few months later in my home state and I was seriously annoyed. In fact, I called up Mr. Junior Prosecutor and he recanted everything he said saying that he had no control over out-of-state issues. I think I said something about blowing up Nephi if I ever went through there again (this was definitely pre 9/11 folks) and hung up. In fact, it was the last ticket I've ever been found guilty or admitted of.
So, returning to the scene of the cri.....misunderstanding held some special significance. Suffice it to say that at 5 a.m. while traveling through Nephi, Utah--I did at least two miles hour under the speed limit for at least three miles. This was the strangest part of my rally.
Shortly after Steve put us back on a two-laner in the wee morning hours of Sunday. The sun began to come up an illuminate the berg of Eureka--a town that should be night permanently. This mini Detroit definitely could only improve.
Heading back north the rural lights of hap hazard farms gave way to the consistently lighted weirdness of Toelle Army Depot and constant K-band radar goodness. Unnerved I began a last minute mountain approach through a pass area, another bonus, and descended out of them onto a 10.1 mile stretch of perfectly straight road with absolutely zero traffic or side roads to slow things down.
Being a working stiff at the Hanford Nuclear site I have to say that the Dugway Proving Grounds has a similar sort of approach. It's like they said, "We have a ton of space so let's build a perfectly straight road for miles and miles so we can see them coming." So, with my GPS I could tell that lone building and light I saw at the end of the road wasn't just weird optical illusion, but was actually where I was headed in a rapid fashion. It's like my throttle hand muscles spasmed for 4 minutes before I could control them again. If they were watching with binoculars I bet I looked like a 737 coming on final approach.
About a mile out I rolled back on the throttle and poked my head up to act like an air brake. That was fun. Dang fun!
I shimmied left and right through their make-shift anti-truck-bomb gate and cautiously approached one smiling guard and one frowning one holding a Mossberg shotgun. We had been told in our packet that the guards had no idea we were coming so to be nice. Seems the previous ralliers had kept this guy in a good mood and he eagerly signed my packet. The Mossberg guy even lightened up and pointed his gauge away from me.
Departing the gate to the north I found the only other road that got to this site and headed towards civilization to the north. As the miles began to tick off I saw my last bonus was a Chevron on I-80 and made an educated guess that it was where this two lane joined I-80. I hoped so anyway because my reserve light began flashing.
Unfortunately, I guessed wrong and my joining with I-80 landed me at MP77. Chevron was at MP99 and I was sweating some bullets as I drove smoothly and slowly to the west. Rolling into the Chevron I took on 6.33 gallons of gas and did the math from 6.6 capacity. I cut that too close and doubt I really had 0.27 gallons left before the injectors started sucking air. My last rookie mistake.
With an hour left before the finish line closed I had the sense about me to snag two bonii I had missed on the first leg about 24 hours earlier. I counted copper domes at the Saltair exit and returned to the airport careful to get short term parking and not cause another orange alert at security.
Later I would confess the consternation I gave airport parking officials and Chalmers had enlightened this was all by design. Seems the staff there had pissed him off repeatedly with poor customer service and having 75 motorcycle rallyists stress them by making out receipts by hand was pay-back. Remind me never to get on this guy's bad side.
I also stopped at the mini-mart next door and a six pack of icy goodness (#44 - 882 points).
Checkpoint #4 - Finish 07:45 - Mile 1244 (Corrected)
I rolled into the parking lot, went over my packet while sprawled out in the grass, turned in the packet and had a beer myself. I really didn't care in the slightest how many points I had or how I had placed. I truly was satisfied with just completing the ride, doing it safely, and no speeding tickets.
I Can Hear the Ocean....
Chapter 5 - Fade to Black
09:00
I was starting to feel a little logy now and figured that a nap was in order before the awards banquet at 1 p.m. I found drifting off harder than I expected, but did fall asleep and get some needed R.E.M. sleep. I also figured that I'd probably get some sleep after the banquet, get up at 3 a.m., and ride back to Pasco.
Chapter 6 - Curtain Call
12:15 Sunday
Freshly showered I milled back out into the parking lot and found Chalmers and crew wound up ready to hold court at the banquet. He enlisted our support to haul what seemed an entire motorcycle apparel shop from his hotel room to the banquet area. I counted 48 helmets to be given away as door prizes! Wow! Throw in the half dozen jacket, half dozen Widder gift certificates, and set of tires and the chances of not being drawn for a door prize were slim.
In true efficient motorcycle rider style somebody procured the luggage carts available and we hauled the ceiling high piles of garb to the banquet room. After setting the booty of helmets in attractive pyramids I picked a seat at one of the tables next to my ol' buddy Warchild and commenced to chowing down some decent food.
Chalmers held court well giving props to the volunteers (standing O to his wife) while ratcheting from 10th to 1st the top solo finishers. There were a three couples that rode and all were recognized and I secretly thought not only are these tough riders, but they must have full time shrinks at home to want to ride 1200 miles together on purpose.
Steve also awarded several special commendations to folks including an RPM award--in honor of long-time rallier and LDR community elder Ron Major. I had read about Ron of course, but his passing was before my time. I'm absolutely sure I would have liked the guy too.
As he announced #1 being my fellow golfing buddy and FJR rider George Zelenz I was tickled pink for the guy. I knew he had chosen one of the alternate routes and scored big miles. With 1st place plaque firmly in hand he then confessed his story to the room. It's a story that I've come to learn from writers like Bob Higdon are the makings of rally legend.
Put your ear to George's head and you can hear the ocean
Seems his rough route was to venture to Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming, Arizona, and Colorado for lotto and keno tickets dispensed by the various state authorities. Not sure of the exact order or list, but 1700+ miles does allow one to see a big swath of the West. Zipping around multiple western states in a single day also produced some intended consequences. I personally like to think this senior citizen of a bird was trying to make it's last contribution in life as modern art.
George said it smelled horrible burning on the radiator and exhaust.....whatever species it was..
1 of 2 Bird Strikes for George Zelenz
Somewhere about 11 p.m. he was in the NE corner of Arizona in the slimmest pickings of populated bergs when George asked for an Arizona ticket.
The clerk apologized, but told George that the state run machines shut off a 7 p.m. and he couldn't sell any tickets.
George said he felt like somebody had reached in his chest and ripped his heart out. He grilled the clerk with questions determined that he must find a ticket and wouldn't let this stand in his way. I understood this alternate route to mean you had to get tickets from all the states or get none of the points. He had gone from in the thick of pulling down a serious points package to a DNF. Not acceptable. He also cursed Chalmers with some choice names in front of the clerk. George also broke the story for a second and venomously asked Steve if he knew this little fact. Steve just smirked and shook his head without saying a word.
Back into the story George was demoralized and beaten at this point when the clerk responded, ".....but I do have three in my pocket I bought myself earlier. I'll sell them to you." George said his twisted heart jumped again and began beating. From winning to DNF to winning again in a few seconds. He said he read through the rules and didn't see anything about tickets passing through middlemen and promised the clerk to send a batch of homebrew for the tickets.
Chalmers broke in and said, "That's the difference of a first place finisher."
Everybody in the room clapped. And so it is the story of a legendary ride.
Chapter 7 - The Fat Lady Sings About 3.2% Beer
In amongst the awards Steve gave away the pile of serious goodies, and I ended up scoring a brand new HJC CL-14 helmet that I ended up wearing back home. It's my primary helmet now, flows well, and fits great. My second HJC helmet.
After a half hour of more camaraderie I went back to the room to drop off my booty and retire to the bar.
Chalmers opened up a $150 tab at the bar and we all partake in icy goodness. Usually in the porters or heavier beers Utah microbrews don't seem finished, but these were pretty good for being 3.2%. I compared notes, heard lies, and made up a few lies myself and experienced the camaraderie the Utah 1088 is famous for.
I also thanked in earnest some of the veterans that helped me out including John Langan, Brian Roberts, Jeff Earls, and of course, Warchild. And, I got to know a half dozen other people I had seen, but not properly met.
The Utah 1088 is a class act. It's run professionally, is exciting, and I can't wait until next year. If I would have thought Steve would have accepted a check I would have written one for full payment in 2006. I'm definitely coming back and want to crack the top 10 next year.
At about 8 p.m. or so I called it a night and went back to the hotel room for some more needed sleep.
03:00 Monday
With my old helmet strapped to the rear of the bike I departed back to Washington via I-15 and I-84. Night gave way to morning and I kicked it casually back up the strip. 630 miles never seemed so easy. The trip was uneventful if not a bit rain filled. People in cages looked at me forlornly like I was a kitten stuck in the rain, but compared to the past couple days a little precipitation didn't even really slow me down that much.
After all, I just completed the grueling Utah 1088 and now think of myself as one of the World's Toughest Riders.
Peace out.
Matt
Mileage
1 1727.8 WILSON, DALE
2 1723.7 ZELENZ, GEORGE
3 1598.6 SCHMITT, ALEXANDER
4 1506.3 ESTRIDGE, KEITH
5 1493.7 WADE, BILL
6 1486.1 PEEK, DICK
7 1470.3 LANGAN, JOHN
8 1431.9 OWEN, JIM
9 1418.8 SCHMIDT, SCOTT
10 1414.1 LaDUE, DANNY
11 1374.1 SWETLAND, GEORGE
12 1363.6 POWLES, JEFF
13 1353.2 PARKER, JOHN
14 1314.1 LEGG, DAN
15 1304.4 ROBERTS, BRIAN
16 1290.1 MONTOYA, ARTURO
17 1263.5 YOUNG, MARK
18 1262.7 YOUNG, THOMAS
19 1251.5 PRATT, JEFF
20 1245.3 HURLBURT, JAMES
21 1244.7 WATKINS, MATT
22 1243.9 EARLS, JEFF
23 1222.0 STANFIELD, JERRY
24 1215.3 FOWLER, JACK
25 1215.0 PILKINGTON, KEN
26 1212.0 JONES, MARK
27 1205.5 PETERSON, JIM
28 1198.8 TORTER, ROBERT
29 1186.0 EVANS, MIKE
30 1185.1 LAHMAN, LYNDA/TERRY
31 1184.3 PAUL, JACKIE
32 1182.5 BROADHEAD, STEVE
33 1182.4 VAUGHN, REBECCA
34 1168.5 BRUNKEN, LEON
35 1164.6 HUBER, LARRY
36 1161.8 PERRIN, PETER
37 1161.2 COMOLETTI, DAVIDE
38 1158.0 FRENCH, MARK
39 1156.6 COLLINS, MICHAEL
40 1155.2 CUDDEBACK, KEN
41 1153.6 ZIESENISS, ROGER
42 1153.2 WARATH, DAN
43 1152.3 SOMERS, JOHN
44 1152.3 HERNANDEZ, FRANK
45 1151.9 HEALEY, KEVIN
46 1151.3 LEVEAUX, TAMMY/MONTE
47 1150.4 SAGER, ANDY
48 1149.5 GATENSBY, MAURA
49 1144.6 BECKSTRAND, THANE
50 1144.3 DURANDETTE, LARRY
51 1142.8 POPPALARDO, BOB
52 1141.9 CAMPBELL, JACK
53 1141.4 MOORE, STEVEN
54 1141.3 CHYE, QUEK CHENG
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This story is about my build-up to the Utah 1088. This rally event is held annual and is the single longest running motorcycle rally in the world. If when you hear "rally" you think of Harley dudes meeting Sturgis like a ride-in--then this is a completely different version of a rally.
This rally is competitive.
It's not a race though either. It is about riding a long distance for a long time, searching for bonuses (bonii) like a treasure hunt, and being efficient at stopping, going, and thinking while on the move.
Enjoy.
Matt
Prologue - The Build -Up
October 2004
I applied for my first competitive rally. Drawn as number 59 of 75 riders--the Utah 1088 in June 2005 promises to be a kick in the butt!
January 2005
I received my Utah 1088 Rally Rules.
March 2005
There's a hazy shape in my mind's eye that is the Utah 1088. I've read the pre-rally notes multiple times, but there's nuance I don't quite yet grasp in Steve Chalmer's carefully crafted words like a teaser to a play. In fact, I feel life like a high school freshman reading a college play. I read the words, comprehend the odd simile and forced metaphor, but somehow I don't yet know the arc of the lead character. I haven't a clue how the play ends.
But that's OK. It adds to the excitement, because I'm the character in this "more than two checkpoint" play. The Utah 1088 promises to be the most dynamic play there can be. The script will start at dawn at a bland cookie-cutter hotel in Salt Lake City where a sea of long-distance prepped motorcylerly sit parked and quiet. (There'd be morning dew in this imagery if it were not for being the desert and summer).
I know there will be a frenzy in the first act as everybody rallies off. And, I also know there will be a symbolic intermission at some yet-to-be-known point perhaps in an adjoining state. And the final act will undoubtedly be written in fatigue and road scmutz in the coming of the second dawn.
I signed up for the Utah 1088 on great advice from the star senior in my metaphorical class. Magna Cum LDR, Dale (Warchild) Wilson is a work colleague and one of the most interesting pony-tailed fellas you'll ever run across. His riding is legendary, heart the size of an ox, and huge contributor to the Yamaha FJR community. He reminds of a cross between a Jedi and a Hells Angel.
He recommended the Utah 1088 as the classiest of rallies, doable, I signed up in October and when the check cleared it suddenly hit me. I'm a newbie entered into the finest 24 hour rally in existence.
Meanwhile, I drift off to sleep each night mentally practicing my trapping skills. Chalmers has to be kidding.....probably.
May 2005
I received an updated Newsletter.
June 2005
With oil freshly changed, gadgets procured, and reservations lined up I set my goals for the event.
Finish the event. Don't get a DNF.
Do it safely. Don't splat or get splatted.
Don't get any speeding tickets. I've have a spotless record for 14 years and want to keep it that way.
Anything beyond these three goals would be gravy.
Chapter 1 - Getting There Is Half the Fun
Wednesday, June 22
I got out of Pasco at about 8:30 and the ride down I-84 to Utah is pretty uneventful (that's code for boring). Part of me wanted to cut off the Superslab at Twin Falls, Idaho and take the two-laner through Jackpot, Wells, and Wendover, but I had dinner plans with my high school friend and fellow councilmember, Jim Perry, in Cedar Hills, Utah. Jim and I have kept in loose contact since high school, but coincidence had struck both of us in 2003 as we both ran for and won councilmember seats of our respective communities. Also coincidentally we had both purchase new motorcycles within a month or so together. Neither fact did we figure out until talking to each other later.
Me visiting him while I was in Utah was an important matter so I had to hastily get down the road, through SLC traffic, and 720 miles later I was in Cedar Hills pulling out my cell phone for last block instructions when a lanky guy rides by on a bad-ass Buell.
2005 Buell Lightning XB12S
As he flipped a U to investigate this non-LDS interloper I quickly realized it was my buddy and waved. I followed him home and we spent dinner and the evening catching up on bike, politics, religion, and life in general. Regrounded to my old friend I was pleasantly surprised that our different paths of life were still tempered by more common interest than different.
Thursday, June 23
Jim, his wife, Zonda, and children are the most gracious of hosts and they put me up for the night. Jim even took the morning off work to go for a ride. So up Provo Canyon we went, booked on by past Sundance up the Alpine Scenic Loop, and found the twistiest road I've ever ridden with Jim leading point. He was decent rider on this little rocket of a bike and I did my best to keep up with him. Frankly, Jim and the bike were better through the corner than I was and I'd twist the throttle to catch back up in the straights.
By 10 a.m. we were where the road ends wandering through the Aspens to a Cascade Springs. Dismounting we wandered the wooden walkways around the area. Besides the place being very geologically interesting and devoid of a single person on a Thursday--there was a very contented female moose chomping away at moss in the ponds. Boy, was I glad we had not enountered her on the road. We must have watched her for 10 minutes scarcely 50 feet away.
Descending back down the mountains Jim and I switched bikes for a few miles on the main road. I immediately noticed how rough the V-twin idled to life, but once underway a very torquey and snappy experience. With no fairing or windshield I felt more like I was sitting in front of the handlebars compared to the touring-like FJR. Jim's comments of the FJR was how smooth and quiet it was and how tubby it felt. But, he did say he was surprised when corners came up how easily leaned over and well it made it through for being a barge.
This stellar ride was an unexpected bonus and reminded me of the two years of college I spent in Utah. Incredible natural resources and scenery 15 minutes away from civilization and very few people around using it.
Chapter 2 - On Your Marks
Back by about noon I said my goodbyes and motored back up to SLC and arrived at the Holiday Inn hotel that would be rally HQ. The parking lot had a half dozen motorcycles already parked including Warchild's Blackbird. I eased the FJR in backwards next to him and smiled that this event prided itself in encouraging new participants. Newbie rookie and seasoned veteran park next to each other without giving it a second thought.
Checked in and luggage unpacked unceremoniously on the room floor, I returned to the parking lot and spent the afternoon meeting new people from various corners of the country. Migrating to the bar I was reminded about the weird Utah laws and signed my temporary club membership. 3.2% microbrew beer went down tastily, but without the usual ethanol infused effect. I felt a little gypped, but probably a good collateral benefit in hindsight.
I jumped in the commandeered hotel van and headed to Steve Chalmers house for the barbeque. He introduced himself and family and welcomed us to his suburban home.
I immediately made my first rally mistake. Hankerin' a beer as were others Steve reminded us that we didn't read our pre-rally packets and it was BYOB. Damn! I'm making mistakes even before the rally starts. I'd find out it was not going to be my last mistake. Diet coke it was.
Somehow Steve's manner and style fitted my expectations. I didn't think I had any expectations and had only seen a couple pictures of him. But his manner fitted his face and writing style. Calling us all together and laying out details of the days ahead he commanded attention belying his experience as a Marine and former LA cop. He moved with a lanky walking gait where his long arms swung much farther than his foot speed seemed to imply. He was also a position talker too. He'd start a sentence standing in one spot, move 5 feet turning 180 degrees in the process, and finish his sentences with a wry smile and maximum effect on the crowd. He obviously had a soft side too.
I liked Steve immediately.
Dinner was tasty with pulled pork barbeque sandwiches and the line to mud pie t was one of military precision and discipline. Dollops of chocolate sauce made the desert the best I'd had in a long while.
Now relaxed Steve gave the group opportunity to ask serious questions about the upcoming rally and rewarded a question answered in the pre-rally packet by giving the asker a rock from his garden.
"Hold on to this. Don't lose it. You have to hold onto it for the entire rally.......But don't worry. You won't be holding it long. Somebody else will ask a dumb question soon."
This was Steve's weird way of motivating people to have pre-read material in this serious business of long-distance motorcycle rallying. The rocked changed hands many times in 15 minutes, and some even seemed eager to be rock holders.
"Where's the first checkpoint" was answered with, "Somewhere in Utah." and the rock followed.
Asked the same question "....where's the second checkpoint" and answer identical. The rock moved steadily.
Curiously, when asked the third checkpoint Steve checked up and blurted out, "New Mexico."
The crowd went silent.
I was thinking to myself, "Cool. I haven't been to New Mexico before." when another lady said exactly what was on my mind. To me, the uninitiated, Moab and Shiprock both looked similarly far away and exciting on the maps I had cursorily scanned earlier. To the veterans it had shut them up and grabbed their undivided attention.
Steve went on to talk about getting back to the roots of the event and that universally seemed to be interpreted by riders as code for "ass exhausting". Things had gotten serious for a moment and I watched intently looking for social clues.
Things lightened back up when George opened his mouth next and asked, "?????"
He was rewarded with chuckle and the rock. Steve sternly suggested that he should show up to the driver's meeting at 7 p.m. the next evening for the answer to that question. This gave me dejavu of Bender getting the bull's horns from Mr. Vernon in The Breakfast Club.
To be chastised by the Rallybastard was flattering to some. To be designated rock holder was to wear a granite badge of honor.
I had met George earlier that afternoon as he rode the same '05 Galaxy Blue FJR as I did. George struck me as a rumpled person. He and his clothes looked like they had been through the dryer and tangled up with a sheet. You know the cotton shirt that gets matted up in a fitted sheet and you leave in the dryer for two days? I reasoned that George has dishes stacked in the sink at home too because he had more important things--like ride hundreds of miles to Utah to make dinner. To me it's an endearing quality and I immediately liked him too.
I ended up getting paired with him in the golf tournament the following morning as Team FJR.
The big group waned as the light started to fade and caught a ride back with endurance riding legend Bill "Nasty Newt" Newton who had flown in from his home in Arkansas. Seems Newt had lived much of his life in Huntington Beach as a ???, but in his post-retirement had taken up a second career as a lucrative pig farmer. Another character whom I liked immediately.
Back at Rally HQ I wandered to bed surfing cable and counting motorcycles to sleep.
05:45 Friday, June 24
05:45 comes entirely too early and I try and reconcile the motorcycle logistics of going golfing. For one, you don't usually ride a motorcycle to a golf course. Carrying clubs just plain sucks. Second, I didn't have any clubs anyway. I was 630 miles from my clubs barely had remembered a tooth brush. Third, I wasn't sure with this group if it was bad from to ride in tennis shoes, shorts, and t-shirt down the road two miles or if we were expected to don full gear.
Being a newbie and remembering the rally pack that not wearing protective gear in the rally I went the conservative route and put on everything. Traveling down I-80 to the exit next door I was in the parking lot with motorcycle boots shucked before I realized I forgot my tennis shoes in the room.
Frack! 6 minutes until tee off and I'm late. No way am I doing 9 holes in Oxtar Matrix boot now matter how comfortable they are. Don gear, ride at an elevated rate back to the hotel, get shoes, and ride back to the golf course.
Check-in was relatively quick and a bargain where I come from at green fees, cart, and rental clubs costing only $26. Resting in the cart with a breakfast burrito I wait for George to show up. He does show up at 6:30 with that look like he'd spent the night in the dryer again.
The 9 holes were fun having met Quek Cheng Chye. Chye (pronounced just like the popular Starbucks drink) was a sushi chef by day and object of Bob Higdon notes in the 2003 IBR about loud exhausts. Yet another character in this crowd. I was starting to feel positively middling.
The golf course teased George and I as we pulled down scrambling pars the first two holes. By the third hole though we showed our true golfing colors and began posting erratically with triple-bogeys interspersed with more pars. Hole 8 all four of us imploded and we pushed the reset button on the tee blocks--our only obvious cheating I can recall.....or will disclose. Is it true all I really ever needed to learn in the Utah 1088 is in golf the day before?
Posting a 45 George and I felt positively bogey and I think simultaneously returned to our hotel rooms for naps. It was a good thing too. 2 hours of nap that afternoon made good book-ends to the 6 hours of sleep I'd end up getting that night. 8 hours of decent sleep before the rally ended up being a VERY good thing.
Before I bedded down I went through tech. inspection and it was largely self directed. Not having a fuel cell I was left to affirm I had all the requisite pieces including first aid kit, flares, tools, well maintained bike, and decent tires. We also did a pre-determined loop to adjust speedometers and I came in at 15.5 miles vs. the standard of 15.3. My GPS said 15.24 as an anal factoid.
All Friday afternoon and early evening riders went about fiddling with their motorcycles. Some, like myself, organized bits here and there tweaking non system critical pieces. I Velcroed on a new indoor/outdoor thermometer and countdown timer I had bought at Wal-Mart earlier. I had metaphorically stepped over dead puppies to buy these goodies as my mentor, Warchild, had lamented the day prior when buying similar sweat-shop produced goods.
I also set about Windexing only the lights and mirrors on the buck careful to avoid the layer of bug splats and grime I had accumulated the past 700 miles when on queue I curtly heard behind me, "A clean bike is a gay bike."
Classic Warchild.
I stammered out something completely unmemorable when I should have said, "Yes Obi Wan. I am merely cleaning the emitters of my light saber so it works better. I remain mindful of the motorcycle Force."
....maybe next time.
Chapter 3 - Get Set
19:00 Saturday
Chalmers called the cast and crew together for the first official meeting. Much of the beginning material was updates or expansion upon the ideas within the pre-rally pack....which I had actually rescanned that afternoon.
Then he dropped a bombshell.
"Look to the person next to you and introduce yourself."
We did.
Steve spoke head down as if at a funeral, "I expect we'll have a 50% attrition rate this year. I think only 1/2 of you are going to finish this event."
Another stunned quiet silence......followed by loud staccato chatter from every. I immediately said to Dale mockingly, "Dude! That sucks that you're not going to finish."
His eyes rolled around and he retorted, "Yeah, whatever! We'll see if you say the same thing in 24 hours...fish."
We heard a bunch more details and I filed away the notes mentally. One that confused me was what units the GPS bonii were in. My GPS is set to decimal degrees--meaning a degree amount followed by a decimal number (ddd.nnnn). Steve said they'd be in degree, minutes, and seconds (ddd mm' ss'), but don't worry about seconds. Weird, but whatever. Turns out the next day they were in degrees decimal minutes (ddd mm.nnn). If fact it ended up being a post rally discussion between John Langan and myself where corrected my inaccurate use of "degrees minutes decimal" being a surveyor. Shows how much I remembered from my college experience as a surveyor
Thanks John.Afterwards I headed to eat some dinner and wolfed down a bowl full of seafood pasta. It was good Shortly after I headed to bed and was asleep a couple hours later by midnight.
I woke up at 5:45 and headed to the cafe for some light breakfast. I was actually surprised by the people packing away serious food so figured my colon would want to rid itself of the previous night's pasta--so why not hurry things along with a little bit of morning grease.
It worked well and I went over last minute mental preparation while on the throne. I couldn't think of any gaping holes in my preparation and personally declared my bike saddled up ready by 06:45. I also had my laptop fired up with MS Streets and Trips as an aid to the packet I was about to get.
Chapter 4 - GO!
07:00
The final drivers meeting and was very anticlimactic. Can't even remember anything critical and we got our packets about 5 minutes later.
As Chalmers plopped down the sequentially numbered packets, "1, 2, 3, 4...." Cordura swathed ants scooped up their manilla packets and scurried back to their rooms. The starting line would open in 55 minutes and about a million dollars of motorcycles, gadgets, and Camelbaks would be shooting out of the parking lot in all directions.
I opened the packet and ignored the alternate routes listed and tried to get my mind around the format of the legs, checkpoints, and bonii. I had been schooled previously, but my lack of internalizing secondary Utah road numbers confused me immediately. Since the legs didn't have mileage on them I couldn't construct in my mind a 2D map of where I was supposed to go.
I did take one piece of advice offered by George Zelenz and Brian Roberts and immediately circled on my AAA map in pen the checkpoints and times they were open. I had these three dots of information if nothing else.
I noticed bits and pieces of useful facts about individual bonuses, but even after a full hour I couldn't imagine the route in my minds eye. I knew the checkpoints were Heber, Moab, and Scipio and Streets and Trips helped a little bit by making routes all over the place, but it seemed centered more on trying to route you on 4 lane big roads. This was the exact thing I noticed when reading previous year's riding accounts and I full expect that as a reader you're about to be similar confused by my account.
I'm going to try and simplify things a bit for you though. If for the next few chapters you do nothing else--try and think of the rally as 4 legs of the following map:
Salt Lake City to Heber This leg was relatively short. Checkpoint was open in 3 hours--a mere 1/8 of the rally in time southwest of SLC.
Heber to Moab - 6 p.m. was mostly fast two lane headed mostly south and west near the Colorado border. The leg was from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and received the severe heat of the day in open high plains and dry lake beds. At 7 hours it was the average length leg.
Moab to Scipio was the long meat of the rally heading due south, curving north into the wide open mesas and valleys, west up the moutains, south again, and yet another slow curve through more dark mountains into the wee hours of the morning back to civilization and I-15. At 10 hours this section was when the rest of the world sleeps and crazed motorcyclists are churning serious miles.
Scipio to SLC wasn't just a straight shot back up I-15 but bypassed the Provo/SLC mess by shooting you west through some technical secondary roads, by sleepy subdivisions, and out into the surreal world of the Dugway proving grounds. Roads out here are Euclidian straight being built by the Army with vast tracts of land, but are also the toughest because you're tired, exhausted, and have the false sense of security of being close to the barn. At 4 hours it's technically short, but the dawning morning reminds you that you've been up for at least 24 hours straight.
i
2005 Utah 1088 Base Route
I sat there in my room puzzling over the first leg unable to decide which ones to go after. I did highlight in yellow what I believed to be the main route, but I knew there was no way I could get my mind around the whole thing. Paralyzed, I even went past the 8 a.m. starting line opening from advice in previous years that spending 15 minutes extra in the room might help.
But shrewdness was giving away to the feeling of floundering. So, I decided to just look at one piece of the elephant mess and focused on a 6,000 point GPS bonus was up near Evanston, Wyoming. In my mind's eye I could estimate that distance as I had bootlegged good Wyoming beer about 15 years earlier while attending college at Weber in Ogden. This was going to be my first bite of the day long elephant. It was my sole hook to the reality of road that lay outside my room.
Out to the parking lot I went where it felt strange that about 60 of the riders had disappeared. A few milled around like myself.
Out of the parking lot I rode and secretly breathed a sigh of relief after I rolled past the 0.7 mile mark. I had heard the horror story the night before of a rider rear-ending a car less than a mile into the 2004 rally because the car had the audacity to stop at a stop sign in front of him. No way did I want to be this sort of statistic.
I rode west on I-70 and hoped that the rally would make more sense as I went along. As my goals were to finish and I was traveling the pace of traffic I still thought I could do this thing. In fact, I rode by an exit that I thought I recognized as a bonus, but missed it. Sure enough I saw several riders looking at a gun range sign. I'd come back by if I had time for this 600 pointer.
My GPS clicked off the miles as I droned up I-70. The day was spectacularly beautiful and the morning air felt great. I exited at 193 in the middle of nowhere and surmised the bonus (a UDOT water tank) was on the south side of the freeway. Since the only road was a gravel one up a hill I motored up it unafraid and expecting serious bonii would require serious riding.
Passing a skull and cross bones sign with some Hazmat-like H2S writing on it I figured I was going away from the bonus and went back down the road. A trail off the gravel road with a weed patch up the center called my name and I ventured down that fiasco for a few hundred yards.
As I crested the hill I could see a half mile away the freeway and an old style water tower on the north side of the freeway.
Not good for my first bonus. Here I am in lost in the Tulies--which made me laugh because I wondered if the expression actually meant lost in Tooele, Utah.
Unable to find a turn-around I knew my FJR was definitely not a V-Strom dual sport even if I've commandeered a set of hand guards from one.
Phukit! I'm turning anyway and did my best V-Strom impersonation possible. The rear end spun wide, I rammed through a sagebrush, and smelled it instantly. I road back down the hill and crossed under the freeway to the bonus location as I noticed, coincidentally, a V-Strom, with Mike Thibideau parked at the bonus. Nodding I pulled out the Polaroid and examined the bonus description, old tank, and suspiciously a poly plastic 1,000 tank next to the building. Remembering they call Chalmers the Rallybastard I carefully framed the picture to include both tanks just in case he was as a hard-ass as his reputation.
Remounting the bike I began to unwind the miles of I-80 to Park City. I went passed and picked up the gun range bonus and chastised myself for having to do 14 extra miles when I could have gotten the bonus earlier. It would be my first mistake of many, but at least I now was on the board with about 6 or 7 thousand points.
Checkpoint #1 - 11:30 - Heber - Mile 0155
The Heber checkpoint opened at 11:00, but I could tell I was going to be about a 1/2 hour after that. Not an immediate problem as the checkpoint was open until 12:30, but I really had no idea of how the rest of the rally would work. I hoped I was not losing ground and getting in a hole, but it just seemed like after Heber there was not a ton of miles before getting to Moab.
So, I took the time at the gun range stop to transcribe some of the bonus information from the rally pack inside my tank bag to some 3"x5" note cards I had purchased the day before.
It worked pretty well as I stopped in Heber for another picture bonus right on the route. The stop went smoothly and I was underway again as I looked for the checkpoint
Chalmers was there himself and waved me in. As he initialed my forms he thanked me for wearing Joe Rocket gear. Seems his job was being a distributor for the line along with HJC helmets and other gear. Who knew?
Munching a granola bar I headed out of Heber on 40 and wondered if I'd ever see any other riders.
My wish was rewarded and I think I first ran into John Langan. John rides a Goldwing like it's a sport bike and I think I remembered a reference to this veteran in reading about the Ironbutt. John is missing several digits on his throttle hand, but if anything his shortage of phalanges seems to have sped this guy up. Behind him I found my rate of travel increasing from moderate to an "elevated" status.
I had learned the term elevated from Chalmers at the driver's meeting the evening before as a preferred adjective to describing velocity when writing rally accounts. It seems describing speeds in specific, concrete unit terms like miles per hour is considered bad form. I'll leave it to the reader to interpret these adjectives and merely suggest that not once does any Utah 1088 competitor ever exceed the speed limit. .....nuff said.
The scenery of the high desert gave way to alkali flats and straight stretches of increasing afternoon heat. With a veteran cruising in front of me I suddenly didn't feel lost anymore and my confidence improved dramatically. I even queried my GPS for the as-the-crow-flies miles to a 600 point bonus to Steamboat Springs. I immediately dismissed it as one of the "sucker bonus" I had read about. While seeming obvious that hundreds of additional miles just didn't make mathematical sense for the point reward I bet Chalmers knew that we riders would agonize over them with nothing else to do on desolate streches of road. I just didn't go for the bait as I muttered my mantra, "Finish, safely, no tickets......"
Zooming along I suddenly found myself at I-70 and gassed up in Green River. As I gassed I realized I had missed a weirdly signed bonus where the milepost markers seemed out of order. Not wanting to go back I made a guess at the answer since a plethora of road signs were across the street. I figured I had a 50/50 shot of getting a right one (I guessed wrong by the way).
I lost sight of John and ther riders, but continued on more confidently riding solo. Somehow I knew I'd catch up with them in Moab.
I also read about a 2,800 bonus coming up at Arches National Park. This one looked meaty, but I couldn't tell how far off the main route it was. Our mission was to pay admission to the park, crawl along behind tourists until we got to Delicate Arch, hike in, get a picture, and unwind whatever we'd gotten ourself into. Chalmers warned that "every tourist west of the Rockies" was going to be in this park at this time of day, but being about 9 miles from the Moab checkpoint with 3 hours to kill what else was I going to do, but be a rat running through the maze?
I entered the park right behind a BMW and asked the ranger how far into Delicate Arch--I'm sure the exact same question as the rider in front of me.
From memory he rattled off, "13 miles in is the turn off. Another mile is the parking lot. 2 1/2 hour hike in and out."
My heart sank as it was hot, I was in black gear, and would have to lug my tank bag full of expensive goodies.
He added at the last second, "Or......... another mile in is another parking lot and it's then a 4 minute hike to a vantage point you can take a picture."
Hmmmmmm? My spirit buoyed.
The road started a 25 mph switchback mess and Winnebegos infested it's length. Once on top of the bluff I was able to pass some cars and settled in at a moderate pace through the most beautiful scenery I had scene in a long time.
Picture I Did Not Take....But Is Very Cool
Courtesy of Tony Scavo Photography
The view of rocks, arches and bluffs made me think that any moment a Road Runner would scoot by in a puff of smoke or an anvil would land on a coyote. First moment I saw an Acme brand box on the side of the road I was going to turn around and whack the throttle in the other direction....
13 miles later I made the ranger prescribed turn and went past the first parking lot. I saw several bikes parked and tried to remember the specific details of the written bonus. Second parking lot and I parked pulling out the bonus sheet and lamented the seemingly specific directions about parking in the first lot and hiking to the arches for a picture.
Again I knew I was making progress on my goal of finishing and not worrying so much about the bonus I decided to go ahead and get the picture from here. I didn't think the points would count, but no way am I hiking the full mess. Even the four minute hike in black Joe Rocket gear, heat, and tank bag under arm was more taxing than I suspected. Tourists eyeballed me and even asked what the heck I was carrying.
Taking the picture of the stunning, if not smallish, arches in the far distance I began my trip back down and ran across veterans Brian Roberts and Jeff Earls hiking the other way sans tankbags (smart veterans). I wondered aloud to them lamenting that we probably wouldn't get the points, but Jeff said he had asked Chalmers in the morning before leaving (smart thinking guy who reads and digests his packet) and he thought Chalmers was OK with it...or at least cryptic in response.
Fine. If I'm flailing this bonus--at least I'm going down in flames with two other veterans.
Repacking the bike a weather front of wind started blowing over me. The dropped temperature felt good, but having been in Utah for a few days it seemed like afternoon thunderstorms were becoming the norm and this didn't bode well for the next few hours.
Checkpoint #2 - Moab 16:45 - Mile 0430
Out of the park I rode the 10 or so miles into the interesting named little berg of Moab. It wasn't even 5 p.m. and I knew the checkpoint wasn't open for quite a while so I decided to stop for some dinner at McDonalds and try and transcribe more bonii onto note cards because the method was working out so well for me. With about a third of the rally over I was feeling more and more confident.
Seeing Chye and Mike roll in, eat, and spread out maps on tables just reinforced that I was getting the hang of rallies.
17:45
I rolled out McD's. I had added one Big and Tasty to my stomach and minus one Big and Floaty in their bathroom. We were square in my book.
I rolled into a Chevron on the south edge of town not needing fuel, but needing some air in the rear tire. One goof I had made was not check the tire pressure the night before and somehow on the few days since leaving Pasco it had gone down from 42 psi cold to about 39 psi hot. Not sure of conversions hot and cold I just aired it to 42 psi knowing the 7 pounds would help.
I also refilled the CamelBak with straight ice that had held out most of the day and threw away some wrappers and trash I had accumulated. Checkpoint opened at 6 p.m. and Bill ??? signed initials quickly while the several dozen troops rolled out for the long, night leg. I knew this was going to be a serious leg.
Rolling out there was obviously a pretty good pack of riders scattered about. I remember seeing Brian Roberts, Jim Owen, Jeff Earls, the Young brothers on FJR and BMW, and various other riders I hadn't fully met yet. There was a whole series of picture bonii between Moab and Blanding--my next gas stop.
One bonus was Hole in the Rock tourist trap and from what I could tell it bore no breathtaking value whatsoever. The gimmick seemed to be huge painted letters pointing to this tiny spot on the rock face. I was reminded of the maps that say, "You are here" only this one was on a 1:1 scale. What impressed me though was being ahead of Jim Owen, me stopping, thinking I was pretty quick at taking off one glove, shooting a picture, writing information down information on the picture and packet with the red Sharpie I had smartly velcroed onto the dash, and putting the material all back in less than two minutes. Owen had rolled in 30 seconds after I did and rolled out 15 seconds before me. This 2004 winner was a bonus machine!
Another bonus, Newspaper Rock, was off the main road and those that headed towards the more menacing clouds to the west. To the civilians at the parking lot it must have seemed like they were being invaded by Cordura swathed Borg. We walked with jerky determinaton (actually it was road weary stiffness) to the rune encrusted rock without uttering a word or taking off our helmets? And each one carried the same black plastic piece of antiquated technology, and all would shoot an identical, hasty shot of the rock. The Polaroids looked in stark contrast to gaggle of technology that grew out of our bikes.
And not only did we retreat from the rock silently as if we were all connected by telephathy, but more Borg mounted bikes appeared to backfill the scene and repeat the process.
The civilians were lucky and remain unassimilated. They would have a story to tell their friends as they watched the troops scurry back to their mother ship.
We made it back to the main road and passed through Monitcello scooping up the entry sign bonus and kept the speedos right on the speed limit. We were far from the highways patrolled by the USP and locals have a reputation for not being forgiving of those that flout the posted safety signs. Rumor has it that a few of our brethren were cautioned by the local cops about their undisciplined throttle hands. A misunderstanding I'm sure....
After Monitcello things got a bit dicey. The threatening sky changed it's horizontal composure and turned itself vertical into a menacing wall of black and gray. Car traffic slowed down to a crawl and the double yellow no passing stripes conspired against our two wheeled clan. Then the lightning started. Big bolts across wide swaths of sky. Big spidery bolts followed by big booms scarcely a second later. Fat droplets of rain smelled dusty and felt warm to the touch.
Then things got interesting.......
The sky wall opened up to pour water on us in sheets. George Swetland would later pronounced it "Biblical Rain".
The UDOT also seemed to have a sense of humor and pulled the asphalt out from under our wheels. Orange cones and small streams of flash run-off crossed the gravel mess--all the while panicking a civilian into slowing down to a walking pace and turning on their hazards. What is that about? Turn on your hazards and stack up dozens of vehicles behind you as if to say, "I'm scared to bejeezuz and you should be too. Not only will I block you, but I'll call attention to the fact that I forgot traffic safety in high school and won't pull over."
Being on point I was supposed to determine when to safely pass, but when buckets of water are being thrown in your face you can't decide whether it's safer to try and peer out between rain covered visor and windshield through rain covered glasses, or just close the whole thing up, pull over, and cry, "Mommy!"
Finally, we made it through the meatiest part of the water wall and a straight stretch of asphalt opened up. Myself and a dozen kindred blipped on by poor old Noah and his 15 mph Chevy ark. Putz!
Blanding, UT came up and it was time to gas up, dry the visor, change into rain bottoms, and think about the upcoming night time of cold, elevation, and twisty roads.
Rolling out of Blanding I saw the local constabulary eyeing myself and other two-wheeled strangers with a bit of suspicion. Careful to obey the local limits I'd find out later that he was actually a friendly local and extremely tolerant of several brethren whom were confused about the limits. To get a warning at +/- 80% of the posted limit makes me think Blanding is nice little berg to revisit and spend some tourist dollars.
South a few miles of Blanding I ran across Mark and and Thomas Young at the intersection of ???? stopped and talked to them for a minute. I was wondering if they were considering the Kayenta, AZ bonus, but they weren't. I wasn't sure exactly which road I should take to Kayenta so sort of resolved that if I saw a sign headed that way I'd think about diverting off.
About 10 miles on farther I had that sinking feeling....."Why were they stopped back at the intersection? Writing down bonus information. Dang!" Looking at my note card I saw it was worth 600 points and worth it to turn around. Hauling butt I passed them and a half dozen other riders. I'm sure the veterans thought, "Newbie." as I blurred by and newbies probably thought, "Should I be going that way?" in a similarly blurred state.
Back at the intersection I wrote down the information, flogged myself mentally for the screw up, and noticed that my "hair was on fire" as Bryan Roberts so eloquently noted in his write-up. I rode into the twilight at an elevated rate. Catching back up over the course of tens of miles I spot some bikes pulled over at another intersection with hazards on so I slow down and stop. Asking if everything is all right they said they're just logging the bonus. "How many miles to Hanksville?", they say.
What? That's the other intersection I tell them, but they're not biting.
Dang. They were right and I had backtracked for nothing. Two rookie moves in a row. No wonder my hair is on fire.
I shook it off and continued traveling at my elevated pace. Something about wanting to be with the main pack made my throttle hand bend at a peculiar angle in the late evening hours. It certainly was the road for it. Oncoming traffic could be counted in terms of 2 or 3 passing cars per hour. The scenery was breathtaking as the shadows got longer.
Somewhere about Glenn Canyon I had made up the distance and passed Mark and Thomas to show them my burning hair. A sole BMW rider was also probably similarly impressed and disturbed at the horsies available in the FJR.
Fortunately, it started to rain shortly after that and put my fire out. Mark and Thomas caught back up and we entered the Captiol Reef area with lots of bonuses and it was pitch black. I arrived at the Entering Capitol Reef sign first and was just getting done taking it's picture when I realized there was a second much more handsome carved sign 100 yards farther. Tapping brake lights I suggested they try taking a picture of the latter one. Another rookie minute wasted.
A picture of a cabin a couple miles later and another similar wooden cabin that happened to be a school. Our collective driving lights did a pretty good job at illuminating Polaroids for later inspection by Chalmers. There were some seriously meaty points in this stretch and it made sense because one would have to travel hours from nowhere to get here.
The critters were also coming out too at this point and I made hasenpfeffer out of a suicidal bunny. This is my first rabbit hit and under advice from the resident wildlife snuffer, Warchild, you just don't do anything at all when you see bunnies. Hold straight and 99% of the time they don't do any damage to the bike. "Fwunk-funk.", is the noise you should hear and feel.
There was also a black piece of trash that seemed to move in the breeze that avoided identification until I was 30 feet away I recognized the white stripe on it's back. It seemed to hunker down in my bright lights just as I did a quick jog to the right. It missed my left peg and toe by an inch or two. The prospect of a hitting a skunk mine hadn't been in my vocabulary before. Great! One more hitch in the badlands of Southern Utah.
Other comical critters included Mark remarking at a bonus stop around midnight, "See all those frogs?"
To which I replied confused, "Frogs? Huh? No, but I remember a bunch of mice."
Mark had been riding for 20 hours straight like the rest of us and I could see the image shift crawl across his face. He said slowly, "I guess they COULD be mice...." You see, the mind of a successful Utah 1088 rider is actually like Play-Doh. It's malleable and subject to subtle tricks. I could have told him they were desert cockroaches and bet he would have bought it.
Finally, there were the forest rats. I was pretty fortunate and only had one that was even close. At 30 mph one decided to run along aside me at a 20 mph gallop. I immediately noticed how tall these deer. They must be corn fed or taking growth hormones or something. It startled me looking UP at the deer beside me and and I grunted out loud my surprise at their size, proximity, and how shiny their eye was. The deer flinched at my grunt.
We quickly changed our vectors and parted company.
I could sense this night stage was mile after mile of intense beauty. It's just a shame I couldn't see but what was within my light beam. ....except for one particular section of road that got my attention which in hindsight I'm glad I couldn't see.
One gets used to mountain riding and the regularity of either trees on both sides or trees/mountainside to one side and guardrail/drop off to the other. You focus your life in the light beam and all is good. You take in the ying of the traffic signs adjusting speeds accordingly--and yang as if you have a subtle connection to the original road designer and the flow of their road design. It was a quite predictable 60 mph road with 35 corners, and it became my routine.
.....then suddenly there was a giant sign warning of 14% grade and 25 mph limit. I slowed down well ahead of the sign more of surprise than anything. It just seemed out of place from the flow.
As I crested a small hill it struck me how the headlight illuminated not only the immediate road, but the extremely snaky S curves of the road for the next half mile. Where were the trees at? Neither side had any trees? That's weird. But even weirder was the fact that neither side of the road had any earth stacked up vertically beyond it. It's like the road was elevated above a marsh and I could only see the brush as it tapered off 50 feet into blackness. And there was no guardrail. My neck hair stood on end.
Later on I would figure out that we were on the "Hogsback" and it was a thousand feet drop down on either direction. The picture I found on the net doesn't really do it justice, but perhaps you can imagine running across the crest of this ridge in the middle of the night.
Hogsback by Day....Scarier in Person at Night
I'll have to admit I'm not sure of the roads I took past this point or which towns I gassed up in. Looking at the map the chronological order of material between Hanksville and Panguitch are a little fuzzy. I do remember it was no longer twisty and mountainous in Panguitch and seemed like a milk run up Highway 89 to the weirdly named checkpoint of of Scipio.
Scipio. Say that dozens of times in your brain after riding about a thousand miles. Scipio, scipio, sCipio, sciPio,...... What was this place? I had images of Montclair, Lyndhurst, and Ramsey, New Jersey stuck in my head. I imagined Tony Soprano and all his crew holed up in a diner waiting to whack us all because we had ratted out his new home in the witness relocation program.
I even imagined local farmer that fell overboard in the river and died, Jack Carr, was there serving coffee and telling me to tell Czebotar, "Hope you liked the hat I sent for Christmas."
Back to the puzzle of road number, I knewthat 89 seems to parallel I-15 in it's northern arc and I'm not sure whether it was wise to go west on I-70 to join up with I-15, but going that way it certainly was cold and filled with mile after mile of orange construction cones. Back on I-15 I began the drone 55 miles north and began calculating how much time I'd have to sleep. I wasn't yet too tired--which surprised me. I think the dinner and breakfast were the right choices.
Checkpoint #3 - Scipio 03:34 - Mile 1000
26 minutes of sleep it seemed as I rolled in to Scipio and parked right next to Dave McQueeny's BMW. I'd never met Dave before, but knew from reading before he's a perennial player of this and other LDR contests. I'd like to think I provided him stimulating perspective as a newbie, but being toast on a stick at that point I never even took off my helmet or ear plugs. I'm sure I sounded monotone and wore out. He might have even wondered why I headed off north away from the mini-mart into the darkness.
Instinctually from my BBG a month before I knew that a 20 minute combat nap was on my agenda and I had just enough time to do it. My choice of cardinal compass direction had purpose. I walked about 100 feet on past the concrete barriers and where the parking lot lights didn't beam straight at me. I chose a nice weed infested area that may be designated overflow parking, but nobody had been in a long time. No semis would drive over my body accidentally. The weeds even acted as shade to the yellow sodium lights.
Set at 24 minutes my Screaming Meanie was set to the highest pain threshold available and I began my slow drift into slumber about four seconds after laying down.
04:00
Apparently another rider asked where I was in the intervening time seeing my bike parked riderless, but Dave had forgotten or not seen where I went. They suddenly remembered when they heard the meanie go off somewhere out in the weeds over there in the shadows. They saw a mummy sit bolt upright and blink. He got up and shambled back over just like a mummy too.
I rejoined the living that were now getting signatures and stamps from Dave and motoring off.
I thanked Dave for the stamp and proceeded to not do anything other than take off my helmet and hang out a bit. I felt better sleeping, but needed some food and drink. Remembering from Warchild that 4 a.m. is the perfect time for a Mountain Dew I bought one and choked half of it down along with some sunflower seeds. I'm not usually into caffeine on long rides, but it was close to the end of the rally and I wasn't going to risk the nods now with the combat nap. I was rejuvenated with the four basic rally food groups. Caffeine, sugar, salt, and fat. After half of each I stowed the remains, I donned headgear and headed out.
I remember seeing Rebecca Vaughn looking remarkably fresh if not grizzled. I hadn't seen her the whole event and knowing she was an IBR contestant this year I figured she was running some super-duper veteran route and plan worth a bajillion points. I only found out later that she was actually a hard charger victim of some BMW issues, was at the shop in SLC all day, and instead of tossing in the towel made it at least to this checkpoint. Good on 'ya Becky! Besides if this sport could use anything--it's more rallying women who also happen to be beautiful.
Forging up I-15 I could see Steve was going to shoot us off the main road west before hitting Provo. I had one risky move traverse through Nephi though. Flash back about 14 years if you will when I was last on this stretch of highway. Headed to Vegas in my '78 Rabbit I encountered a Nephi LEO who insisted that 65 in a 55 just was not cool. Oddly enough I wasn't cool with getting a special award and was an interested neophyte in trying to keep my driving record clean. I stopped and talked with some junior prosecuting attorney and they assured me that the ticket was just monetary and wouldn't show up on my record.
Problem is that it did a few months later in my home state and I was seriously annoyed. In fact, I called up Mr. Junior Prosecutor and he recanted everything he said saying that he had no control over out-of-state issues. I think I said something about blowing up Nephi if I ever went through there again (this was definitely pre 9/11 folks) and hung up. In fact, it was the last ticket I've ever been found guilty or admitted of.
So, returning to the scene of the cri.....misunderstanding held some special significance. Suffice it to say that at 5 a.m. while traveling through Nephi, Utah--I did at least two miles hour under the speed limit for at least three miles. This was the strangest part of my rally.
Shortly after Steve put us back on a two-laner in the wee morning hours of Sunday. The sun began to come up an illuminate the berg of Eureka--a town that should be night permanently. This mini Detroit definitely could only improve.
Heading back north the rural lights of hap hazard farms gave way to the consistently lighted weirdness of Toelle Army Depot and constant K-band radar goodness. Unnerved I began a last minute mountain approach through a pass area, another bonus, and descended out of them onto a 10.1 mile stretch of perfectly straight road with absolutely zero traffic or side roads to slow things down.
Being a working stiff at the Hanford Nuclear site I have to say that the Dugway Proving Grounds has a similar sort of approach. It's like they said, "We have a ton of space so let's build a perfectly straight road for miles and miles so we can see them coming." So, with my GPS I could tell that lone building and light I saw at the end of the road wasn't just weird optical illusion, but was actually where I was headed in a rapid fashion. It's like my throttle hand muscles spasmed for 4 minutes before I could control them again. If they were watching with binoculars I bet I looked like a 737 coming on final approach.
About a mile out I rolled back on the throttle and poked my head up to act like an air brake. That was fun. Dang fun!
I shimmied left and right through their make-shift anti-truck-bomb gate and cautiously approached one smiling guard and one frowning one holding a Mossberg shotgun. We had been told in our packet that the guards had no idea we were coming so to be nice. Seems the previous ralliers had kept this guy in a good mood and he eagerly signed my packet. The Mossberg guy even lightened up and pointed his gauge away from me.
Departing the gate to the north I found the only other road that got to this site and headed towards civilization to the north. As the miles began to tick off I saw my last bonus was a Chevron on I-80 and made an educated guess that it was where this two lane joined I-80. I hoped so anyway because my reserve light began flashing.
Unfortunately, I guessed wrong and my joining with I-80 landed me at MP77. Chevron was at MP99 and I was sweating some bullets as I drove smoothly and slowly to the west. Rolling into the Chevron I took on 6.33 gallons of gas and did the math from 6.6 capacity. I cut that too close and doubt I really had 0.27 gallons left before the injectors started sucking air. My last rookie mistake.
With an hour left before the finish line closed I had the sense about me to snag two bonii I had missed on the first leg about 24 hours earlier. I counted copper domes at the Saltair exit and returned to the airport careful to get short term parking and not cause another orange alert at security.
Later I would confess the consternation I gave airport parking officials and Chalmers had enlightened this was all by design. Seems the staff there had pissed him off repeatedly with poor customer service and having 75 motorcycle rallyists stress them by making out receipts by hand was pay-back. Remind me never to get on this guy's bad side.
I also stopped at the mini-mart next door and a six pack of icy goodness (#44 - 882 points).
Checkpoint #4 - Finish 07:45 - Mile 1244 (Corrected)
I rolled into the parking lot, went over my packet while sprawled out in the grass, turned in the packet and had a beer myself. I really didn't care in the slightest how many points I had or how I had placed. I truly was satisfied with just completing the ride, doing it safely, and no speeding tickets.
I Can Hear the Ocean....
Chapter 5 - Fade to Black
09:00
I was starting to feel a little logy now and figured that a nap was in order before the awards banquet at 1 p.m. I found drifting off harder than I expected, but did fall asleep and get some needed R.E.M. sleep. I also figured that I'd probably get some sleep after the banquet, get up at 3 a.m., and ride back to Pasco.
Chapter 6 - Curtain Call
12:15 Sunday
Freshly showered I milled back out into the parking lot and found Chalmers and crew wound up ready to hold court at the banquet. He enlisted our support to haul what seemed an entire motorcycle apparel shop from his hotel room to the banquet area. I counted 48 helmets to be given away as door prizes! Wow! Throw in the half dozen jacket, half dozen Widder gift certificates, and set of tires and the chances of not being drawn for a door prize were slim.
In true efficient motorcycle rider style somebody procured the luggage carts available and we hauled the ceiling high piles of garb to the banquet room. After setting the booty of helmets in attractive pyramids I picked a seat at one of the tables next to my ol' buddy Warchild and commenced to chowing down some decent food.
Chalmers held court well giving props to the volunteers (standing O to his wife) while ratcheting from 10th to 1st the top solo finishers. There were a three couples that rode and all were recognized and I secretly thought not only are these tough riders, but they must have full time shrinks at home to want to ride 1200 miles together on purpose.
Steve also awarded several special commendations to folks including an RPM award--in honor of long-time rallier and LDR community elder Ron Major. I had read about Ron of course, but his passing was before my time. I'm absolutely sure I would have liked the guy too.
As he announced #1 being my fellow golfing buddy and FJR rider George Zelenz I was tickled pink for the guy. I knew he had chosen one of the alternate routes and scored big miles. With 1st place plaque firmly in hand he then confessed his story to the room. It's a story that I've come to learn from writers like Bob Higdon are the makings of rally legend.
Put your ear to George's head and you can hear the ocean
Seems his rough route was to venture to Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming, Arizona, and Colorado for lotto and keno tickets dispensed by the various state authorities. Not sure of the exact order or list, but 1700+ miles does allow one to see a big swath of the West. Zipping around multiple western states in a single day also produced some intended consequences. I personally like to think this senior citizen of a bird was trying to make it's last contribution in life as modern art.
George said it smelled horrible burning on the radiator and exhaust.....whatever species it was..
1 of 2 Bird Strikes for George Zelenz
Somewhere about 11 p.m. he was in the NE corner of Arizona in the slimmest pickings of populated bergs when George asked for an Arizona ticket.
The clerk apologized, but told George that the state run machines shut off a 7 p.m. and he couldn't sell any tickets.
George said he felt like somebody had reached in his chest and ripped his heart out. He grilled the clerk with questions determined that he must find a ticket and wouldn't let this stand in his way. I understood this alternate route to mean you had to get tickets from all the states or get none of the points. He had gone from in the thick of pulling down a serious points package to a DNF. Not acceptable. He also cursed Chalmers with some choice names in front of the clerk. George also broke the story for a second and venomously asked Steve if he knew this little fact. Steve just smirked and shook his head without saying a word.
Back into the story George was demoralized and beaten at this point when the clerk responded, ".....but I do have three in my pocket I bought myself earlier. I'll sell them to you." George said his twisted heart jumped again and began beating. From winning to DNF to winning again in a few seconds. He said he read through the rules and didn't see anything about tickets passing through middlemen and promised the clerk to send a batch of homebrew for the tickets.
Chalmers broke in and said, "That's the difference of a first place finisher."
Everybody in the room clapped. And so it is the story of a legendary ride.
Chapter 7 - The Fat Lady Sings About 3.2% Beer
In amongst the awards Steve gave away the pile of serious goodies, and I ended up scoring a brand new HJC CL-14 helmet that I ended up wearing back home. It's my primary helmet now, flows well, and fits great. My second HJC helmet.
After a half hour of more camaraderie I went back to the room to drop off my booty and retire to the bar.
Chalmers opened up a $150 tab at the bar and we all partake in icy goodness. Usually in the porters or heavier beers Utah microbrews don't seem finished, but these were pretty good for being 3.2%. I compared notes, heard lies, and made up a few lies myself and experienced the camaraderie the Utah 1088 is famous for.
I also thanked in earnest some of the veterans that helped me out including John Langan, Brian Roberts, Jeff Earls, and of course, Warchild. And, I got to know a half dozen other people I had seen, but not properly met.
The Utah 1088 is a class act. It's run professionally, is exciting, and I can't wait until next year. If I would have thought Steve would have accepted a check I would have written one for full payment in 2006. I'm definitely coming back and want to crack the top 10 next year.
At about 8 p.m. or so I called it a night and went back to the hotel room for some more needed sleep.
03:00 Monday
With my old helmet strapped to the rear of the bike I departed back to Washington via I-15 and I-84. Night gave way to morning and I kicked it casually back up the strip. 630 miles never seemed so easy. The trip was uneventful if not a bit rain filled. People in cages looked at me forlornly like I was a kitten stuck in the rain, but compared to the past couple days a little precipitation didn't even really slow me down that much.
After all, I just completed the grueling Utah 1088 and now think of myself as one of the World's Toughest Riders.
Peace out.
Matt
Mileage
1 1727.8 WILSON, DALE
2 1723.7 ZELENZ, GEORGE
3 1598.6 SCHMITT, ALEXANDER
4 1506.3 ESTRIDGE, KEITH
5 1493.7 WADE, BILL
6 1486.1 PEEK, DICK
7 1470.3 LANGAN, JOHN
8 1431.9 OWEN, JIM
9 1418.8 SCHMIDT, SCOTT
10 1414.1 LaDUE, DANNY
11 1374.1 SWETLAND, GEORGE
12 1363.6 POWLES, JEFF
13 1353.2 PARKER, JOHN
14 1314.1 LEGG, DAN
15 1304.4 ROBERTS, BRIAN
16 1290.1 MONTOYA, ARTURO
17 1263.5 YOUNG, MARK
18 1262.7 YOUNG, THOMAS
19 1251.5 PRATT, JEFF
20 1245.3 HURLBURT, JAMES
21 1244.7 WATKINS, MATT
22 1243.9 EARLS, JEFF
23 1222.0 STANFIELD, JERRY
24 1215.3 FOWLER, JACK
25 1215.0 PILKINGTON, KEN
26 1212.0 JONES, MARK
27 1205.5 PETERSON, JIM
28 1198.8 TORTER, ROBERT
29 1186.0 EVANS, MIKE
30 1185.1 LAHMAN, LYNDA/TERRY
31 1184.3 PAUL, JACKIE
32 1182.5 BROADHEAD, STEVE
33 1182.4 VAUGHN, REBECCA
34 1168.5 BRUNKEN, LEON
35 1164.6 HUBER, LARRY
36 1161.8 PERRIN, PETER
37 1161.2 COMOLETTI, DAVIDE
38 1158.0 FRENCH, MARK
39 1156.6 COLLINS, MICHAEL
40 1155.2 CUDDEBACK, KEN
41 1153.6 ZIESENISS, ROGER
42 1153.2 WARATH, DAN
43 1152.3 SOMERS, JOHN
44 1152.3 HERNANDEZ, FRANK
45 1151.9 HEALEY, KEVIN
46 1151.3 LEVEAUX, TAMMY/MONTE
47 1150.4 SAGER, ANDY
48 1149.5 GATENSBY, MAURA
49 1144.6 BECKSTRAND, THANE
50 1144.3 DURANDETTE, LARRY
51 1142.8 POPPALARDO, BOB
52 1141.9 CAMPBELL, JACK
53 1141.4 MOORE, STEVEN
54 1141.3 CHYE, QUEK CHENG
