Travel Log Archive

March 2, 2008 Tim’s 2007 SPANK Rally experience - Part 1: Pre-Rally

The story of my first Endurance Rally actually starts several days prior. Fellow Spoke ‘N’ Word member Mark and I had hatched a plan where he would ride my ST1300 from the Seattle area down to his sister-in-law’s house in Mission Viejo, CA before the Rally and I’d ride it home afterwards. Our reasoning was that he would get a nice ride down through the desert areas of California and Nevada, I’d get my bike delivered to Southern California and we’d both save a day or two of precious vacation time that would’ve otherwise been spent droning along I-5. Mark keeps my old Nighthawk 750 in Mission Viejo so he can fly down on weekends during our rainy season, (he works a 4/10 schedule with Fridays off and his wife works for Alaska Airlines so he flies for free), and enjoy the great roads and weather. I purchased one-way airfare to Santa Ana, flew down on the Wednesday before the Rally started and we spent the night at Mark’s sister-in-law’s place. Mark’s Nighthawk and my ST1300 at the Lookout Roadhouse On Thursday, Mark led us on a great ride through Hemet, Borrego Springs, Julian and on into Escondido, arriving just in time to start the whole Rally check-in process. Over looking Lake Elsinore Call it nerves or just trying to sleep in a strange place, but I ended up getting almost no sleep the night before. As a result, I wasn’t really sure I wanted to take this longer route that Mark had devised. Part of me just wanted to get to the Escondido Holiday Inn, which would serve as Rally Headquarters, and take a nap. The last thing I wanted to do was arrive at the start of my first Rally exhausted. In the end, I am glad that we took the long way as I ended up riding many of these same roads during the Rally and it was helpful to at least be somewhat familiar. I was already having fun as we made our way to the desk at the Holiday Inn. I recognized lots of faces that were milling around the parking lot and the Hotel lobby from the various Long Distance events I had attended. Most of these folks probably don’t have a clue who I am, me being kind of on the fringe in this community at present, but I know who they are. I guess you could say that they’re kind of like celebrities. After getting all checked in and finishing up all of the pre-Rally registration stuff, I had to go do my odometer check. This is done by having each rider complete a specified route, the exact length of which has already been determined. This is done so that the odometer error, if any, of each rider’s motorcycle can be accurately calculated, (most motorcycles have speedometers and odometers that read 5 to 10% fast). Great! A test. I had been instructed to pull the front wheel of my bike up to the duct tape stripe that had been applied in the parking lot. Once there, some very friendly volunteers wrote down my odometer reading and gave me a sheet of paper with some terse driving directions on it. I was to go north on I-15 and take the Deer Springs Rd. exit, turn left, go across the freeway and return directly back to the hotel. That may not be quoted exactly, but it’s pretty close. The first part was easy enough but, after I exited and crossed over the freeway, I got a little confused. I should’ve gathered from these directions that I was supposed to get back on I-15 to return to the hotel but that was not specifically mentioned. You see where I’m going here. The Rally hadn’t even begun yet and I had already screwed up. Rally staff members John and DeVern were very patient with me when I returned and told them what I’d done. They just wrote down the new odo reading and sent me back out. Thanks go to these guys for not making me feel any more idiotic than I already did. Rally worker John checks me back in. Photo courtesy Mark MacConaghy Once I managed to successfully complete the grueling odo check there was another task to be completed. We had been advised to bring one State of California and one San Diego County map to Escondido with us. There were copies of these same maps hanging on the wall in the Registration Room that had symbols and numbers written on them. I could tell that these must be bonus locations but little else was discernible. The trouble with all of this was that the maps were hung in a corner and lots of riders were trying to make their copies at once. The resulting mob made it difficult to read either map. I thought about coming back later in hopes that there would be fewer folks gathered around but I decided it was better to get this done now. All in all, I’m glad I endured this minor aggravation and got the copying done and out of the way. With the last of these chores done, we had about an hour until the Rider’s Meeting was to start. I just wanted to go up and try to take a nap but Mark reminded me that neither of us had eaten since about noon and that I’d probably get more out of a good meal than a nap. I had to agree that he was right and we walked over to a Coco’s that was in the same parking lot. I felt much better after getting something in me and was ready for the meeting. Once the meeting started, we got all the details on Rally Master George Zelenz’s innovative process for transferring all of the bonus locations right to our laptop computers. Much has been made of this but, having never run a rally before, I’m sure I don’t have as big an appreciation for it as someone who has had to enter the coordinates for dozens of bonus locations by hand. I can say though that the process went very smoothly and, in just seconds, I had all of the bonus locations listed as waypoints on a Garmin MapSource map. Slick. The time came for passing out the Rally flags which, for most of us, were XXL white briefs with the rider number spray-painted on the seat. We were also given a handout entitled "The Shoe" which detailed the start of the Rally for us. This is when we found out about the Rally Drawers Bonii. If we showed up at the start, Checkpoint 1 and the finish with our drawers on the outside of our riding gear there was a total of 16,000 bonus points. That sounded easy enough. Even if I screwed everything else up, at least I shouldn’t get shut out. We were also counseled not to waste any time trying to plan a route tonight. We had bonus locations and even point values this evening but it was clear that there was more to come tomorrow so there was little point in trying to plot anything. I had no problem with this as I really just needed some sleep. All I did on Thursday night was transfer the waypoints into my GPS and go to bed. Tomorrow the real fun starts... On to Part 2