Travel Log Archive

March 4, 2008 Tim’s 2007 SPANK Rally experience - Part 3: The Accidental Saddle Sore

...I was pretty sure there was a Starbuck’s across the street from the Shell station at the base of this big hill... Not only was there a Starbuck’s at the bottom of the hill but a Quizno’s right next door. I suddenly realized that I hadn’t had any real food all day. So, I strolled in and ordered my usual - small Mesquite Chicken and Bacon, easy on the Ranch - and headed over to ‘Buck’s to get an iced tea, plug in and see if I could do a better job of planning Leg 2 than I did Leg 1. The first thing I noticed, since it was at the top of page one, was a 100,000+ bonus. I had totally dismissed a 200k point bonus in Leg 1 because it was so close by and worth so many points I figured it HAD to be a sucker bonus. It must be down 50 miles of goat path or worse. I wasn’t going to let another big point bonus get away if I could help it. This 100k point location, numbered 116, wasn’t that far from where I was seated, enjoying my supper and I knew I had to make this one. There were some special instructions associated with it. There was an auxiliary bonus number 116a and the instructions stated that we were to route to that point first and then enter the waypoint for number 116. Apparently, the GPS software would lead us very far astray otherwise. The point value for this bonus got progressively higher the later in the day one arrived. This was likely because it was a long way from rally headquarters. The experienced riders may risk getting there a couple of hours later than I planned to so that they could bag an additional 15,000 points and still be able to make it “home” in time. I was not so confident and my plan was to try to arrive a little before the actual opening time of 5 AM Saturday. Five AM was still some 8 hours away, however, so I needed a plan to collect as many points as possible in that time. There were lots of bonii in and around Hollywood and it seemed that would be the place to go. The trouble was I had only logged 565 uncorrected miles on Leg 1 and I distinctly remembered being told at the pre-Rally meeting that we had to ride at least a thousand miles in the 30 hours to be considered a finisher. Hollywood to bonus #116 to Escondido didn’t seem to offer enough miles. Besides, Hollywood was just about the last place I wanted to be at midnight on a Friday. My Leg 2 route fairly jumped out of my laptop at me. I kept trying to find something else that offered as many points and miles but it was obvious that I was headed back out to Salton Sea. Calipatria had reappeared only this time it was worth roughly three times the points. Unlike earlier in the day, I would come in from the north, avoiding the construction. I was pretty confident that I could easily get there and back to #116 by 5 AM. My Leg 2 route above. My notes for Leg 2 were a little simpler than Leg 1 as it was mostly just "ride, ride, ride" Leg 2 contained both a 60 minute and a 30 minute rest bonus. The bonus listing stated that they could be taken at any time and could even be combined into one rest stop, if desired. After reading and re-reading the instructions and caveat for these bonii, I decided I could, in good conscience, take them for the time I was spending planning my route. I dug around and found my Quizno’s receipt which had a time stamp of 8:50 PM. That meant that Quizno’s would have to be open until sometime after 10:20 PM. I went back to check their hours and, unfortunately, they would close at 10. Starbuck’s, on the other hand, was open until midnight. That would’ve worked if I hadn’t lost the ‘Buck’s receipt I had obtained a few minutes after 9. No worries. Since I was effectively finished planning, the 60 minute bonus would still leave me a short time to rest before taking off. Maybe I’d need the 30 minutes even more later. After briefly chatting with fellow Rallyers Ken Meese and Dave Biasotti, both of whom showed up about the same time I did, and obtaining another Quizno’s receipt for an oatmeal-raisin cookie, (time stamp: 9:52 PM), it was off into the night and back below sea level. The light traffic on I-10 was moving very briskly on this Friday night. Not yet owning a radar detector, this was great news for me as I got to Indio much faster than I had figured. As I had hoped, CA-111 was completely free of road construction all the way into Calipatria and I was able to quickly recreate the photo I had taken hours earlier. As I was packing up, I saw a lone headlight approaching. It was safe to assume that it was another SPANK participant. I’m sorry to have forgotten who it was but he was on a Kawasaki Concours and was a welcome sight. At least I wasn’t the only one who didn’t go to Hollywood. After a quick exchange of where we’d been and where we were going, I was off for Bashford’s Hot Mineral Spa for a photo and then back up CA-111 and I-10 to the waypoint for bonus #116a. As I was closing in on Palmdale, and the map on the GPS zoomed in further and further, I began to notice a waypoint just to the southwest of my route. I recognized the number, 140, as being from Leg 2 and couldn’t help but wonder what it was and why I hadn’t considered it before. I didn’t want to take the time to research it then but I made a mental note to look it up at the next opportunity. I had already decided that I would head back to Escondido via Palmdale after bonus #116 and stay away from I-5. That would allow me to determine then if I had time to add this stop. Before long, I was turning onto Caliente-Bodfish Road and heading for the pre-bonus locale. This is a truly awesome motorcycle road and I would love come back and enjoy it when the sun is up and I haven’t been riding all night. It’s pretty technical and I kept reminding myself to take it easy. This was no place or time to be screwing up and breaking my motorcycle, or worse. Then I noticed the tail light of another bike a ways ahead of me and started thinking how much nicer it would be to be following someone else up this road. I decided to see if I could catch up just a little and benefit from this other rider’s lines without getting so close as to be a nuisance. That worked pretty well and soon we were approaching the target waypoint. We both came to a stop and I began scrolling through the stored waypoints for number 116. The other rider approached and asked if he could write down the coordinates for the bonus waypoint as, for some reason, he couldn’t find it in his GPS. Not that I would’ve refused anybody this request but I especially couldn’t turn down the guy who’d just led me through a very twisty route when I was feeling pretty fatigued. As soon as he was done writing I headed off, following the directions from my GPS. As I was proceeding down the specified road, I began to think that I had fallen for the trap that I suspected from that 200,000 point bonus in Leg 1. This road just kept deteriorating the farther I went. If it got much worse, I was going to have to admit defeat, turn around and head back to HQ without the 100k points. Time for a reality check. I took a closer look at the GPS screen and realized that, as it is wont to do, it was just trying to turn me around and get me back on Caliente-Bodfish Rd. to take me a couple of miles back for a right-hander towards the bonus location. Somehow, I found a place to turn around and headed back to where the other rider was still waiting, probably wondering what in the world I was thinking taking off down that cow trail. He was saying something about a sign that said something about Breckenridge so that must be the way to go. “Sign? What sign? I hadn’t even noticed a sign. And what’s Breckenridge?” Sure enough, there was a sign that we had just passed before we stopped. It was dark colored and since the sun had not yet risen, I hadn’t even noticed it the first time by. The sign, obviously photographed during daylight hours, that I found so easy to ignore. Photo courtesy Eugene Carsey I had spent this whole time thinking of my target as a number, 116, and had forgotten it had a name – Breckenridge Lookout. I rode up to the sign and quickly surmised that this was the road we wanted. So, off I went, up this road called Breckenridge Road. They shouldn’t even call it a Road or a Lane or Avenue. Nope. It’s a Trail. Barely one lane wide, covered in sand, leaves, branches and pine cones. The road - er trail itself reminded me somewhat of the road up to Mt. Evans, in Colorado as far as switching back and climbing. Here are a few of pics of the trail, also shot in the daytime. Photo courtesy Eugene Carsey Photo courtesy Eugene Carsey Try and imagine navigating this road at night using only whatever lighting with which your motorcycle is equipped. This made Caliente-Bodfish look like I-10. The whole time I kept wondering if I’d left the other rider too soon. Did he see where I went? Had he followed the sign? My concern was misplaced as I found out much later that the other rider was Terry Neale, the eventual winner of the rally. In about twice the time that Garmin originally estimated, I finally arrived at Breckenridge Lookout. I wasn’t sure but I suspected that I had just more than doubled my overall score. None other than IBA bigwig and Iron Butt Rally-Mistress Lisa Landry was waiting there to hold my Rally drawers up for my photo. Then I was on my way, just like that. I now had about 5 and a half hours to get back to Rally HQ. I felt really good about this until I started back down the trail. I was worried about dodging other riders coming in for the later, higher points but I hadn’t considered the clouds that were moving in. Since I was above about 7,000 feet, the clouds came wafting across the road in the dark, making visibility extremely poor. Fortunately, this condition only lasted until I dipped to about 5,000 feet then it was clear sailing. At the next gas stop, I looked up that bonus #140. Agua Dulce, nearly 13,000 points, available from 8:30 AM till whenever, I don’t remember. Perfect. I should be going through there about 8:45 - easy money. It was at this same stop that I put my jacket liner and heavy gloves on for the first time in the Rally. The wind was picking up and it looked like I might be heading into my first rain of the Rally, as well. Once again, my failure to familiarize myself with the actual name of the bonus instead of the bonus number bit me big time here. The Agua Dulce bonus was at Vasquez Rocks Natural Area. Had I paid attention to that little detail, I’d have realized that the GPS was leading me to the wrong place. After being so careful all day to make sure that my photos were exactly right, I let my guard down on this one. I took the pic from the wrong location and screwed this one up. Vasquez Rocks was actually on the other side of the road from where the GPS had led me. When I was confused about the location I should’ve re-read the bonus instructions instead of assuming that it’d be okay. This was a rooky mistake. Now, I was “heading for the barn” and feeling pretty cocky, (I didn’t know about screwing up Aqua Dulce yet). I hadn’t deluded myself into thinking I had a good score but I felt that I had learned a ton and had so much fun. I started thinking about one of my favorite things about being in California. In-N-Out Burger, the absolutely best fast food burgers I’ve ever tasted. We don’t have In-N-Out in Washington State and I make it my goal, every time I visit California, to average more than one visit to In-N-Out per day that I’m there. To this point, I had not been one time this trip. I was also thinking that I probably had time to take my 30 minute rest bonus. If only I could’ve spotted that familiar yellow arrow sign from the freeway once I got close enough to HQ to know that I was okay on time. How awesome would it have been to not only have a double-double on the clock, but get 7,000 some odd points in the process? A guy can dream, can’t he? Instead, I arrived in the Holiday Inn parking lot about 10 minutes till eleven AM. I had more than an hour before the window closed at noon. George approached and asked if I had had fun. I said something like, “I had a blast! I hate YOU, but I had blast!” He grinned and nodded like that was his goal all along. I told him I was thinking about stopping at the convenience store on the corner to take my 30 minute rest but I wasn’t sure if that would be cheating or not. He told me as long as I hadn’t checked in it was fair game. I had already donned my rally drawers at “Agua Dulce” and I was in no mood to remove and reinstall them so I left them on while I went in to get a receipt, milled about the parking lot, talked with my wife on the phone and generally killed a half hour before going back to check in. Showing off the Rally Drawers. Wearing these upon arrival at Rally HQ was worth thousands of points. Photo courtesy Mark MacConaghy After 30 hours of riding, I'm ready to go again. Umm, sure. Photo courtesy Mark MacConaghy As I sat, waiting my turn to get scored, I decided I should proof read my documentation one more time. I was looking over my Bonus Summary sheet, on which we were to log each stop with the time and odometer reading. It suddenly occurred to me that from the official starting time of the Rally, 6 AM on Friday, till my arrival at the Breckenridge Bonus at about 5:35 AM on Saturday, I had logged an uncorrected 1040 miles, or so. One aspect of this rally was that George had arranged with the IBA for anyone who wanted to attempt a certified ride during the rally to be able to have it documented and certified on the spot. This meant that the usual 2 to 3 month waiting period while the IBA volunteers researched the route and verified the miles could be bypassed. There were actually 5 or 6 riders whose sole aim was to attempt an all California Saddle Sore 1000. These guys had no interest in bonus points, only riding enough miles in the first 24 hours of the rally to get their first IBA Certificate. Though I had no intentions of trying for an IBA Cert on the Rally, I couldn’t resist claiming my accidental, all California Saddle Sore. I think it’s the cool looking pin that accompanies the certificate that pushed me to do it. More important than the cert though is that I finished! I am a finisher. I ended up in 11th place. 11th place! I couldn’t be happier. I had an awesome time, met and got reacquainted with some great people and even won a door prize at the banquet. The banquet was absolutely excellent. There was great food and good times hanging out with some of the more experienced rallyists. George really knows how to throw a party. Looking back, I can't explain why the initial bonus listing intimidated me so much. I know now that I gave up on it too soon. I would surely have benefited from a few more minutes spent mulling things over. I'm sure that all of the participants can go back and see places where they could have planned better or better executed their plan. I don't tend to get hung up on "coulda', shoulda', woulda'" but I can easily see how much time I wasted in that first leg that could have been better used to bag more bonii. I didn't fully consider how much time it would take to ride my plan and traveled too far south for the time that was remaining. As a result, I ended up getting zero points out of it. Would I have been able to gain enough more points to win? Certainly not. I might have cracked the top ten, though. Hopefully, this is a lesson that I will remember next time - and there will be a next time. Oh, and I ate at In-N-Out twice on Sunday on my way home.