Here you go guys. Unfortunatly, no photos right now.
Paul Peloquin
Monmouth/Lakeview OR
My rally season has started. The 2006 Cal 24 rally is in the books. Here's how it went down.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the concept of a motorcycle endurance rally, I direct you to the excellent write up at Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Distance_Rider Essentially, endurance rallies are scavenger hunts on two wheels. I've participated in 3 Cal 24 rallies and every one of them has been a blast. 2006 was no exception.
This year's rally was headquartered out of Dunnigan. Essentially a fueling station on I-5, the rally started in Dunnigan two years ago as well. Located in North central Cali, the 2004 rally took the riders on some of the most serpentine roads that Northern California has to offer. I was expecting a similar ride this year. I was right. Once I arrived, it didn't take me long to figure out the competition was going to be tough. Whenever you have Jeff Earls and Eric Jewell in the same parking lot, you know you have your work cut out for you. Jeff is a 4-time Iron Butt Rally veteran, finishing third in last years event. Eric won the Cal 24 in '04. Oy. Alan Barbic and Dave Biasotti were present. Dave finished 5th in '04 and 2nd in '05. Could this be his year? Mark Crane showed up and is always a threat. Then there were the 12 or so other guys that you just didn't know about.
Tech inspection was the first order of the day. Motorcycles are checked for road-worthiness; lights, horn, tires, no leaks and what not. Riders are checked to see they have the proper insurance and operator endorsement. Odometers are checked against a course of known distance to measure error. In case you care, my new FJR has an odo error of less than 2%, which isn't bad compared to motorcycle standards. The rest of the day before the rider's meeting was spent visiting old friends and meeting some new ones. Vancouver Washington was nicely represented by a couple of fairly new riders, Tim Cooksey and Dennis York. Tim rides an FJR which is truly becoming THE bike among the LD crowd. BMWs were more numerous, but there we are talking about all of BMWs model. With the exception of the Honda Goldwing, I might risk saying that the FJR is the most popular biking in LD riding right now.
At 7 pm the riders meeting was held. Tom introduced the rally workers and laid down the rules of the event. One; if you see an rider in need, you render aid. The only exception to this was related to gasoline. If a fellow rally rider mis-managed their fuel and run out of gas, well, that was simply their bad, and riders were under no obligation to assist. Tom also suggested that the rider with the gasoline might be able to charge any price he/she saw fit since the rider without the gasoline might be pretty desperate at the time. Other rules included; don't argue with the rally workers; the rally master's decision is final; call if you are going to miss a checkpoint or not finish the rally; no drinking 12 hours before the start of the rally. The rally packets would be handed out at 8 am the next day. Tom suggested we get some sleep and cut us loose.
As long as I've been doing this, I still have trouble sleeping the night before an event. Why? I don't know, but this night was no exception. I think I finally drifted off sometime around 12:30 and was up at 6. A shower and some complimentary hotel coffee got me going and I put the finishing touch on my packing job. I topped off the tanks, repositioned my ancient first-generation Street Pilot GPS, put water in my hydration system and walked to the large double room serving as rally HQ. Packets were distributed at 8 and no riders were allowed to start until 9. That gave us an hour to read the bonus locations and descriptions and plan our route. This year's rally pack contained a bonus sheet and a separate description of the three check points. Riders had to be at Lake Berryesse between 11:30am and 2
m, at Red Bluff between 9 pm and 11pm and at Bordertown (Hwy 395 on the California/Nevada border) between 3 and 5 am. The rally ended at 9 am Sunday morning back at Dunnigan. If you came in after 9, you would lose 100 points for every minute you were late until 10 am, at which time you would be considered a DNF (did not finish). The very first priority is to make sure you don't miss a check point and that you do get back to the finish on time. Running to parts-unknown for that huge point bonus is great, but does you no good if you miss a checkpoint and fail to finish the rally. So now it was time to look at the bonuses.
There were a couple of big point bonuses this year. Gerlach, Nevada (home of the famous Bruno's Country Club and HQ for the annual Burning Man Festival) was worth 1500 points. Easier points were to be had by jumping off a rock into Lake Berryesse at checkpoint one. Hey, if I can jump out of a plane, a little 50 foot fall would be nothing. 2000 points for that baby. Hmmm. Must be a big rock. There were about 1500 points from three bonuses in the Lost Coast region. I knew the roads would be painfully slow, but since I had never been there I decided to go. There were two bonuses at Lassen National Park which looked to be right on the route to the Bordertown check point. "How many window panes are on the north side of the Administration Building at Lassen National Park Headquarters?" With this one sentence you can begin to see the challenge of an endurance rally. Reading comprehension is key. At one in the morning after riding for 15 hours straight, do you think someone might read that bonus and count windows instead of panes of glass? It's possible. Or do you think its possible they'd simply miss count? More on reading comprehension later.
This is the first rally I have ever tried to route using a computer. Up to now, I've used paper maps and a highlighter. My GPS is used simply to determine where I am at any given time, not where I am going. I won't go into detail, but suffice to say I found a glaring problem with using mapping software to try and plan a route that includes checkpoints. When "optimizing" a route, the computer runs millions of calculations and determines the best order of the stops. However, the computer doesn't differentiate between checkpoints and other bonuses. The computer might put checkpoint three ahead of checkpoint one. The computer actually did this, routing me backwards and visiting checkpoints hours before or after I really needed to be there. This whole fiasco had me shelving the computer and just going back to my map and highlighter. I could hear Jerry Smith yelling in my ear "Steve Attwood!" (long story) as I frantically tried to make up for lost time. I did wind up with the most basic of ideas of my route, but my first leg was very poor. I had identified few locations close to Dunnigan. It's fair to say that I left the gate at 9:09 am with little idea of what to do before the Berryesse checkpoint. However, I knew I would just have to plan on the fly.
My first bonus took me to a graveyard to see how old Lucy Hayes was when she died. 10 months young. A trip to the Historic Opera House in Woodland was netted about 150 points. Acquiring just these two bonii took the first hour of the rally. Knowing that I would burn plenty of time on the goat-trail roads of the Lost Coast, I wanted to be at checkpoint one as early as possible, ideally just when it opened. I started heading that direction. Hwy 16 was a blast. If this was a harbinger of things to come, we were in for a treat. I grabbed a quick 90 points at the Spanish Flat Market by getting any receipt (Mmmm, Grape Crush). As I was wolfing down a banana with my soda, Dan Danielson, aka "Steely Dan" came ridin' in. Dan got his nick-name because he's a metal fabricator by trade. A Triumph Tiger comes stock with one exhaust pipe. Dan's has four. Why? Because Dan has converted mounted three extra exhausts converted to hold fuel. I kid you not. It's the slickest thing you've ever seen and unless you knew bikes, you've never notice. I followed Dan up Berryesse Knoxville Road to the first checkpoint.
Generally, I'm not up for many of the little "activities" that get thrown into Tom's rallies. In 2003, I opted to take 20 minute penalty instead of paddling a midget kayak around in Lake Tahoe. I figured I could eat, drink and smoke for 20 minutes instead. Well, Tom was having none of that this year. There were substantial points for jumping off a rock into the lake and slightly less for skiing. I pulled in to the parking lot, looked up and said to myself, "Self, I sure hope THAT’S not the rock I have to jump off." There, on the other side of the inlet, was a rock (a cliff, actually) that stood a good 50 feet off the water. It was 11:18, so technically the checkpoint wasn't open for 12 more minutes. I found Tom. "Is that the rock?" Tom laughed his evil laugh and I knew my answer. I told him I would be jumping at precisely 11:30 so he best be watching. I wasn't going to do this twice.
Good to my word I was at the top of the rock at 11:27. I looked down. I almost turned around. It was a loooong way down. Several boats were drifting in the area, their occupants egging me on to take the plunge. "2000 points, 2000 points…" I told myself. When my watch said 11:30 and I could see Tom watching me from the other side, I let out an expletive, took a leap and hung in the air for what felt like an eternity. My mind momentarily flashed on something Tom said during the riders meeting. "There's nothing in the rally worth dying for." I pondered that statement as I plunged toward Lake Berryesse at what I swore was something near terminal velocity. Since I'm writing this, you all know that it turned out well. I got survived, my points and even picked up a few more for being towed around the lake on a "belly board" or some such nonsense. After I made my jump the flood gates opened. Inspired by my bravery or desperation, other riders made there way to "The Rock" to collect the biggest bonus of the rally. I hit the trail for the Lost Coast.
The next several miles were spent on Berryesse Knotsville Road that parallels the lake. Tom had made mention of "river crossings" and there were several I've attached a picture on one. I've never done a river crossing before on a street bike, but I have now. I've attached a photo.
I think it was at Clear Lake that Jeff Earls passed me. The man is a machine. He collects points like Imelda Marco's collected shoes. Fortunately, you can't hate him cause he's a nice guy. There was a moment, just a brief, nano second of time, when I thought I'd just hitch myself to his backend and see how a rally is really run. But the thought passed quickly; that's just rude. Jeff made his plan and I shouldn't be pulled along on his coat tails. I did notice that Jeff didn't pull off in Lakeport of the little 90 point bonus there. Hmmm. I guess he had bigger fish to fry.
The run up Hwy 101 was uneventful. I was very ticked that fuel was not transferring from my Tanji cell to my main tank. I'm no physicist, but as I understand it, because of the tank design, sometimes the head pressure of the Tanji is not enough to overcome the force of the pressurized main tank. Fuel won't go forward. I ran the whole rally this way, stopping for gas every 180 to 200 miles. I may have to install a fuel pump to over come this. Still, gas stations were everywhere and the issue didn't slow me down too much. I collected a couple of bonii and at Garberville, pointed my bike west.
Ever been to the Lost Coast? https://www.lostcoast4x4.org/history.htm Neither had I until Saturday. Very isolated and beautiful. If the stereo type of Grants Pass is gun-toting survivalists, the stereo type of the Lost Coast is marijuana-growing, Mother Earth News reading, dropouts of the 70's. I'm not being critical; this is just my observation. One of the bonii of the Lost Coast was located at a place called Lighthouse Beach. It was unclear on my AAA map if this was on the southern or northern end of the area. I enter on the southern end and began making my way toward the Pacific. After several miles, I saw Jeff Earls coming toward me from the other direction and turn off on a side road to the north. Thinking Jeff had collected the bonus and was on to the next in Honeydew, I proceeded on. After about 3 or 4 miles I saw a visitor's center and did what few men do; I stopped to ask for directions. The young kid inside was very helpful. If there was mile of gravel road before you got to the beach, the directions must be talking about Mattole beach. He showed me on the map where it was and proceeded to tell about the 1 lane paved goat trail to get there. "It's about two hours by car." So Earls hadn't collected the bonus, missed his turn. I thanked the young volunteer and pointed my wheels north. The kid wasn't lying about the road. This was sport bike territory. Parts of the road were two lanes but much of it had no centerline. My rally experiences have taught me that sometimes you have to slow down to go fast. Riding as quick as you can on a road like this just tires you out in short order. I was only 7 hours into this rally. Better to back it off 20% and make time over the long haul.
Honeydew is a small community smack dab in the middle of the Lost Coast. I arrived at 5 pm on a Saturday. I think the whole town was at the small country store. They had their dogs there too. Every one was sitting at the picnic table and benches on the store's front porch, talking and laughing and just generally socializing. It struck me as the most amazing thing; almost like a small Irish community might gather at the local pub at night. Doug Webb was already there looking for the answer to the bonus question, "What is the phone number of the payphone in front of the Honeydew store?" Eventually, we found it (it was not in the usual location) and off we went. Mattole beach was next followed by a long, chilly, windy ride to Ferndale and back to Hwy 101. Anyone who has spent anytime around the Eureka area know that the sun never shines there. Today was no exception. I would rather live in L.A. than coastal Humboldt county.
After picking up a 500 point bonus in Samoa (bring back a loaf of bread from the Samoa Cook House) I began the trek down Hwy 36. This road is 120 miles of some of the best pavement on planet earth. Smooth, curvy, undulating pavement that I should have been enjoying. I should have been, but I was not. Because on this day, Hwy 36 was just a barrier between myself and checkpoint two in Red Bluff. I felt I was a little behind the clock. Rally Organizer Mike Heran had warned me. He'd said if he was running this rally, he probably wouldn’t go for both the Lost Coast and Eureka. His last words to me were "You’re a good rider…maybe you can do it." In retrospect, he might have just been stroking my ego to see if I'd take the bait. Well, I did, and now I was on course to arrive at Red Bluff 90 minutes after the checkpoint opened. I felt just a little behind for the rest of the rally. Still, this wasn't catastrophic. I had, after all, cleaned up the points on the coast. The run down Hwy 36 was interrupted by a few bonus locations, one at Ruth Lake. The question asked "how many cubic yards of material were needed to construct the dam". I never will know the answer to that, because despite the very best efforts of at least five Cal 24 riders, we could not find that info on the sign at the dam. We looked and looked. We re-read the sign again and again. I rode up the road two miles, thinking that maybe there was a different sign at some other overlook. No dice. We must have burned 20 to 25 minutes on that 200 point bonus. Finally, I just had to move on. The clock was ticking.
Now might be a good time to tell you about Chuck Hickey. Chuck, an LD rider and FJR pilot from San Diego was the Cal 24's roving bonus. If at any point in the rally, you spied Chuck, he would sign your paperwork. Well, here's my confession. I kind of forgot about Chuck. I rode into checkpoint three at Red Bluff, got checked in, and rode away. Apparently, Mr. Hickey was there. In my defense, it was 10:30 pm and dark, but the reality is I was so focused on getting in and out of that checkpoint that I hardly looked up from my cockpit and paperwork. This was the only time my path crossed his and I blew it. But this wouldn't be my last mistake of the rally. Not by a long shot.
I think I enjoyed leg three the most. The Sierra Nevadas are magical for me. I absolutely love the contrast of the beautiful Ponderosa pine against the granite boulders. The rally continued on Hwy 36 in the Sierras toward Lassen National Park. The two bonii here included the afore mentioned Admin Building bonus and getting a picture of your bike in front of the "Road Closed" (due to snow) sign about 10 miles into the park. I wondered if some park ranger might take me down at gun point for suspiciously hanging around on the back door of a federal building in the middle of the night. I counted something on the order of 96 panes of glass and headed into the park. When I arrived at the blockade, I found a Polaroid of our very own George Zelena taped to the gate. The photo showed George with one of his fingers raised in the international sign for "You're number one". The words "You've been spanked" were written across the bottom. I found out after the rally that George had gone directly from Checkpoint one to Lassen just to be sure he was the first there and leave all his rally comrades this greeting. What a guy. Even with this little diversion, George would finish the rally in second place.
I collected a photo bonus of my bike in front of the small country store on Hwy 172 and then headed toward Greenville and a 500 point bonus. Several miles outside of town, Ken Meese, Jerry White and I chatted for a couple minutes as we waited to be let through a road construction zone. The deer were thick through this area. I must have seen 50. Ken was comfortable with a little more speed than Jerry and I, so we let him blaze the trail for us. I wouldn't see Ken again until the finish line. Jerry and I proceeded to Greenville where I made my second (or is that 10th?) mistake of the rally; I doubted Jerry. In Greenville, he took a hard turn east leaving town for parts unknown. I stopped, not willing to just blindly follow and let him lead me to victory ; ) Noooo, instead I had to ride around in circles for 5 minutes until I realized that waaaaay up on a pole in the center of town was a sign for the Peter Lassen Historical Marker, the bonus we were looking for. The arrow pointed exactly the direction that Jerry White had gone. Doh! On top of that, I then misread the sign. It indicated that the marker was 4 miles out of town; I read it as 6. Again, I wondered if the locals would call the cops as I cruised up and down that road looking for a historical marker that was actually 2 miles away from where I was looking. This whole fiasco cost me well into forty minutes of time. I finally found the marker and collected my points
I should take a brief moment to comment on the latest addition to my rally arsenal; high intensity discharge lighting. HIDs are the lights you see on some high end cars that appears a little bluish in color. I took the plunge and spend the money for a set of HID driving lights last winter. Boy, howdy, do these things work. The light the emit is whiter than halogen lamps and more closely mimics daylight. You can see them under the mirrors of my bike in the water crossing photo. I find myself wanting to ride at night just so I can use my high-tech driving lights. I will never go back, and am considering fitting my stock headlights with an HID conversion kit.
My good friend Brian Roberts was staffing checkpoint 3 with Alan Pratt. Every year, Alan test rides the rally the week before the event as a quality control measure. We discussed the fact that some, maybe several riders would not complete a thousand miles in the rally this year. The roads on the Lost Coast and Hwy 36 were just that slow. Since I was running late, I didn't hang around to chat. There were just over four hours left in the rally.
I feel that while a rally is only won with a good overall strategy, a rally can certainly be lost on the last leg. The temptation is to head to the barn too early. A rider is tired and motivation is low. This is a mistake. To finish well, a rider must finish strong. Leg four was my second best leg of the rally; only on leg two did I collect more points. Here's another secret for all you future rally riders; Sunday morning traffic is light. Given the choice to collect points in a metro area on a Saturday morning or a Sunday morning, choose Sunday. That's how I won the rally in 2003. It's amazing how light traffic was in downtown San Francisco at 9:30 on a Sunday. Anyway, I finished strong hitting my final bonus in the light, Sunday morning traffic of West Sacramento at 8:07 am, 53 minutes before the finish. The question was "In what year was the Bryce Water Treatment Facility expanded?" I stumbled my way into West Sacramento and pulled into the first convenience store I saw. I got off the bike and walked right over to a man in his mid-fifties who was gassing his car. "Excuse me, I'm on a motorcycle rally. You wouldn’t happened to know where the Bryce Water Treatment Plant is, would you?" Now, I want you to imagine, you filling your tank early one Sunday morning and some idiot in a flip up helmet and blood shot eyes tells you he needs to get to the sewer treatment plant. What would be your reaction? Well, the reaction of our good Samaritan was just what I wanted and needed to hear. " Oh yeah! Continue right down on Jefferson, turn left on Harbor Way and it's right under the I-80 bridge. You can't miss it". And he was right. You couldn't miss it. I filled in my answer at 8:07 am I had 53 minutes to get back to Dunnigan, about 40 miles away. I was feeling good.
What happened next is a moment that will live in my mind forever. I forgot to latch my Pelican case. I had reached in for a new set of earplugs and I forgot to re-latch the case. I noticed it 6 minutes later as I was merging onto I-5. My case top was flapping up and down in the 70 mph breeze. My heart sank. My stomach heaved. My head hurt. I pulled off to the side and looked in. It was gone. My envelope with three bonus photographs and one receipt was gone. About 800 points, I suspect. It was now 8:13. I had 47 minutes to make 40 highway miles. I would be docked 100 points a minute if I was late. It would take 5 minutes just to get turned around. The points in that envelope were history. I latched the case and re-mounted Moose. We cruised at the limit back to Dunnigan, checked ourselves in and explained to the scorer that even though the paperwork was filled out, there would be no photo bonuses. Now the only question was this: did I still have enough points for a top five finish? I would know in about three hours.
The final standings for the event are here https://www.cal24.com/cal2006.htm As you can see, I just missed a top 5 finish. I think the envelope incident cost me two places. Check out the points and you will see that Jeff Earls is a machine, cleaning everyone's clock but for George Z. During the rally I had thought about Jeff and his rally experience. Like I said, Earls has run 4 Iron Butt Rallies. That's four, 11 day events. I have participated in 7 rallies for a total of 9 days of experience. Earls has nearly five times that experience in just the IBM, let alone any of the 24 hour events he's done. I take some consolation in this fact.
Oh, and remember that little thing about reading comprehension. We all found out at the banquet that there was nothing in the bonus list that required us to jump into Berryesse Lake from the top of that 50 foot rock. We had all assumed that is what was meant. Lisa Stevens was the only one who asked and in fact, made a nice little dive into the lake from a dizzying height of about four feet. Reading comprehension is everything.
The 2006 Cal 24 was another great one. Geographically, California is without peer. I rode from the farmlands of the central valley, the Redwood Forests, the majesty of Lassen National Park, the artificial neon-glitz of a Nevada Casino to a Sacramento sewage treatment plant…all in one day. That is really what endurance rallies are all about.
Paul Peloquin
Monmouth/Lakeview OR
My rally season has started. The 2006 Cal 24 rally is in the books. Here's how it went down.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the concept of a motorcycle endurance rally, I direct you to the excellent write up at Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Distance_Rider Essentially, endurance rallies are scavenger hunts on two wheels. I've participated in 3 Cal 24 rallies and every one of them has been a blast. 2006 was no exception.
This year's rally was headquartered out of Dunnigan. Essentially a fueling station on I-5, the rally started in Dunnigan two years ago as well. Located in North central Cali, the 2004 rally took the riders on some of the most serpentine roads that Northern California has to offer. I was expecting a similar ride this year. I was right. Once I arrived, it didn't take me long to figure out the competition was going to be tough. Whenever you have Jeff Earls and Eric Jewell in the same parking lot, you know you have your work cut out for you. Jeff is a 4-time Iron Butt Rally veteran, finishing third in last years event. Eric won the Cal 24 in '04. Oy. Alan Barbic and Dave Biasotti were present. Dave finished 5th in '04 and 2nd in '05. Could this be his year? Mark Crane showed up and is always a threat. Then there were the 12 or so other guys that you just didn't know about.
Tech inspection was the first order of the day. Motorcycles are checked for road-worthiness; lights, horn, tires, no leaks and what not. Riders are checked to see they have the proper insurance and operator endorsement. Odometers are checked against a course of known distance to measure error. In case you care, my new FJR has an odo error of less than 2%, which isn't bad compared to motorcycle standards. The rest of the day before the rider's meeting was spent visiting old friends and meeting some new ones. Vancouver Washington was nicely represented by a couple of fairly new riders, Tim Cooksey and Dennis York. Tim rides an FJR which is truly becoming THE bike among the LD crowd. BMWs were more numerous, but there we are talking about all of BMWs model. With the exception of the Honda Goldwing, I might risk saying that the FJR is the most popular biking in LD riding right now.
At 7 pm the riders meeting was held. Tom introduced the rally workers and laid down the rules of the event. One; if you see an rider in need, you render aid. The only exception to this was related to gasoline. If a fellow rally rider mis-managed their fuel and run out of gas, well, that was simply their bad, and riders were under no obligation to assist. Tom also suggested that the rider with the gasoline might be able to charge any price he/she saw fit since the rider without the gasoline might be pretty desperate at the time. Other rules included; don't argue with the rally workers; the rally master's decision is final; call if you are going to miss a checkpoint or not finish the rally; no drinking 12 hours before the start of the rally. The rally packets would be handed out at 8 am the next day. Tom suggested we get some sleep and cut us loose.
As long as I've been doing this, I still have trouble sleeping the night before an event. Why? I don't know, but this night was no exception. I think I finally drifted off sometime around 12:30 and was up at 6. A shower and some complimentary hotel coffee got me going and I put the finishing touch on my packing job. I topped off the tanks, repositioned my ancient first-generation Street Pilot GPS, put water in my hydration system and walked to the large double room serving as rally HQ. Packets were distributed at 8 and no riders were allowed to start until 9. That gave us an hour to read the bonus locations and descriptions and plan our route. This year's rally pack contained a bonus sheet and a separate description of the three check points. Riders had to be at Lake Berryesse between 11:30am and 2
m, at Red Bluff between 9 pm and 11pm and at Bordertown (Hwy 395 on the California/Nevada border) between 3 and 5 am. The rally ended at 9 am Sunday morning back at Dunnigan. If you came in after 9, you would lose 100 points for every minute you were late until 10 am, at which time you would be considered a DNF (did not finish). The very first priority is to make sure you don't miss a check point and that you do get back to the finish on time. Running to parts-unknown for that huge point bonus is great, but does you no good if you miss a checkpoint and fail to finish the rally. So now it was time to look at the bonuses.There were a couple of big point bonuses this year. Gerlach, Nevada (home of the famous Bruno's Country Club and HQ for the annual Burning Man Festival) was worth 1500 points. Easier points were to be had by jumping off a rock into Lake Berryesse at checkpoint one. Hey, if I can jump out of a plane, a little 50 foot fall would be nothing. 2000 points for that baby. Hmmm. Must be a big rock. There were about 1500 points from three bonuses in the Lost Coast region. I knew the roads would be painfully slow, but since I had never been there I decided to go. There were two bonuses at Lassen National Park which looked to be right on the route to the Bordertown check point. "How many window panes are on the north side of the Administration Building at Lassen National Park Headquarters?" With this one sentence you can begin to see the challenge of an endurance rally. Reading comprehension is key. At one in the morning after riding for 15 hours straight, do you think someone might read that bonus and count windows instead of panes of glass? It's possible. Or do you think its possible they'd simply miss count? More on reading comprehension later.
This is the first rally I have ever tried to route using a computer. Up to now, I've used paper maps and a highlighter. My GPS is used simply to determine where I am at any given time, not where I am going. I won't go into detail, but suffice to say I found a glaring problem with using mapping software to try and plan a route that includes checkpoints. When "optimizing" a route, the computer runs millions of calculations and determines the best order of the stops. However, the computer doesn't differentiate between checkpoints and other bonuses. The computer might put checkpoint three ahead of checkpoint one. The computer actually did this, routing me backwards and visiting checkpoints hours before or after I really needed to be there. This whole fiasco had me shelving the computer and just going back to my map and highlighter. I could hear Jerry Smith yelling in my ear "Steve Attwood!" (long story) as I frantically tried to make up for lost time. I did wind up with the most basic of ideas of my route, but my first leg was very poor. I had identified few locations close to Dunnigan. It's fair to say that I left the gate at 9:09 am with little idea of what to do before the Berryesse checkpoint. However, I knew I would just have to plan on the fly.
My first bonus took me to a graveyard to see how old Lucy Hayes was when she died. 10 months young. A trip to the Historic Opera House in Woodland was netted about 150 points. Acquiring just these two bonii took the first hour of the rally. Knowing that I would burn plenty of time on the goat-trail roads of the Lost Coast, I wanted to be at checkpoint one as early as possible, ideally just when it opened. I started heading that direction. Hwy 16 was a blast. If this was a harbinger of things to come, we were in for a treat. I grabbed a quick 90 points at the Spanish Flat Market by getting any receipt (Mmmm, Grape Crush). As I was wolfing down a banana with my soda, Dan Danielson, aka "Steely Dan" came ridin' in. Dan got his nick-name because he's a metal fabricator by trade. A Triumph Tiger comes stock with one exhaust pipe. Dan's has four. Why? Because Dan has converted mounted three extra exhausts converted to hold fuel. I kid you not. It's the slickest thing you've ever seen and unless you knew bikes, you've never notice. I followed Dan up Berryesse Knoxville Road to the first checkpoint.
Generally, I'm not up for many of the little "activities" that get thrown into Tom's rallies. In 2003, I opted to take 20 minute penalty instead of paddling a midget kayak around in Lake Tahoe. I figured I could eat, drink and smoke for 20 minutes instead. Well, Tom was having none of that this year. There were substantial points for jumping off a rock into the lake and slightly less for skiing. I pulled in to the parking lot, looked up and said to myself, "Self, I sure hope THAT’S not the rock I have to jump off." There, on the other side of the inlet, was a rock (a cliff, actually) that stood a good 50 feet off the water. It was 11:18, so technically the checkpoint wasn't open for 12 more minutes. I found Tom. "Is that the rock?" Tom laughed his evil laugh and I knew my answer. I told him I would be jumping at precisely 11:30 so he best be watching. I wasn't going to do this twice.
Good to my word I was at the top of the rock at 11:27. I looked down. I almost turned around. It was a loooong way down. Several boats were drifting in the area, their occupants egging me on to take the plunge. "2000 points, 2000 points…" I told myself. When my watch said 11:30 and I could see Tom watching me from the other side, I let out an expletive, took a leap and hung in the air for what felt like an eternity. My mind momentarily flashed on something Tom said during the riders meeting. "There's nothing in the rally worth dying for." I pondered that statement as I plunged toward Lake Berryesse at what I swore was something near terminal velocity. Since I'm writing this, you all know that it turned out well. I got survived, my points and even picked up a few more for being towed around the lake on a "belly board" or some such nonsense. After I made my jump the flood gates opened. Inspired by my bravery or desperation, other riders made there way to "The Rock" to collect the biggest bonus of the rally. I hit the trail for the Lost Coast.
The next several miles were spent on Berryesse Knotsville Road that parallels the lake. Tom had made mention of "river crossings" and there were several I've attached a picture on one. I've never done a river crossing before on a street bike, but I have now. I've attached a photo.
I think it was at Clear Lake that Jeff Earls passed me. The man is a machine. He collects points like Imelda Marco's collected shoes. Fortunately, you can't hate him cause he's a nice guy. There was a moment, just a brief, nano second of time, when I thought I'd just hitch myself to his backend and see how a rally is really run. But the thought passed quickly; that's just rude. Jeff made his plan and I shouldn't be pulled along on his coat tails. I did notice that Jeff didn't pull off in Lakeport of the little 90 point bonus there. Hmmm. I guess he had bigger fish to fry.
The run up Hwy 101 was uneventful. I was very ticked that fuel was not transferring from my Tanji cell to my main tank. I'm no physicist, but as I understand it, because of the tank design, sometimes the head pressure of the Tanji is not enough to overcome the force of the pressurized main tank. Fuel won't go forward. I ran the whole rally this way, stopping for gas every 180 to 200 miles. I may have to install a fuel pump to over come this. Still, gas stations were everywhere and the issue didn't slow me down too much. I collected a couple of bonii and at Garberville, pointed my bike west.
Ever been to the Lost Coast? https://www.lostcoast4x4.org/history.htm Neither had I until Saturday. Very isolated and beautiful. If the stereo type of Grants Pass is gun-toting survivalists, the stereo type of the Lost Coast is marijuana-growing, Mother Earth News reading, dropouts of the 70's. I'm not being critical; this is just my observation. One of the bonii of the Lost Coast was located at a place called Lighthouse Beach. It was unclear on my AAA map if this was on the southern or northern end of the area. I enter on the southern end and began making my way toward the Pacific. After several miles, I saw Jeff Earls coming toward me from the other direction and turn off on a side road to the north. Thinking Jeff had collected the bonus and was on to the next in Honeydew, I proceeded on. After about 3 or 4 miles I saw a visitor's center and did what few men do; I stopped to ask for directions. The young kid inside was very helpful. If there was mile of gravel road before you got to the beach, the directions must be talking about Mattole beach. He showed me on the map where it was and proceeded to tell about the 1 lane paved goat trail to get there. "It's about two hours by car." So Earls hadn't collected the bonus, missed his turn. I thanked the young volunteer and pointed my wheels north. The kid wasn't lying about the road. This was sport bike territory. Parts of the road were two lanes but much of it had no centerline. My rally experiences have taught me that sometimes you have to slow down to go fast. Riding as quick as you can on a road like this just tires you out in short order. I was only 7 hours into this rally. Better to back it off 20% and make time over the long haul.
Honeydew is a small community smack dab in the middle of the Lost Coast. I arrived at 5 pm on a Saturday. I think the whole town was at the small country store. They had their dogs there too. Every one was sitting at the picnic table and benches on the store's front porch, talking and laughing and just generally socializing. It struck me as the most amazing thing; almost like a small Irish community might gather at the local pub at night. Doug Webb was already there looking for the answer to the bonus question, "What is the phone number of the payphone in front of the Honeydew store?" Eventually, we found it (it was not in the usual location) and off we went. Mattole beach was next followed by a long, chilly, windy ride to Ferndale and back to Hwy 101. Anyone who has spent anytime around the Eureka area know that the sun never shines there. Today was no exception. I would rather live in L.A. than coastal Humboldt county.
After picking up a 500 point bonus in Samoa (bring back a loaf of bread from the Samoa Cook House) I began the trek down Hwy 36. This road is 120 miles of some of the best pavement on planet earth. Smooth, curvy, undulating pavement that I should have been enjoying. I should have been, but I was not. Because on this day, Hwy 36 was just a barrier between myself and checkpoint two in Red Bluff. I felt I was a little behind the clock. Rally Organizer Mike Heran had warned me. He'd said if he was running this rally, he probably wouldn’t go for both the Lost Coast and Eureka. His last words to me were "You’re a good rider…maybe you can do it." In retrospect, he might have just been stroking my ego to see if I'd take the bait. Well, I did, and now I was on course to arrive at Red Bluff 90 minutes after the checkpoint opened. I felt just a little behind for the rest of the rally. Still, this wasn't catastrophic. I had, after all, cleaned up the points on the coast. The run down Hwy 36 was interrupted by a few bonus locations, one at Ruth Lake. The question asked "how many cubic yards of material were needed to construct the dam". I never will know the answer to that, because despite the very best efforts of at least five Cal 24 riders, we could not find that info on the sign at the dam. We looked and looked. We re-read the sign again and again. I rode up the road two miles, thinking that maybe there was a different sign at some other overlook. No dice. We must have burned 20 to 25 minutes on that 200 point bonus. Finally, I just had to move on. The clock was ticking.
Now might be a good time to tell you about Chuck Hickey. Chuck, an LD rider and FJR pilot from San Diego was the Cal 24's roving bonus. If at any point in the rally, you spied Chuck, he would sign your paperwork. Well, here's my confession. I kind of forgot about Chuck. I rode into checkpoint three at Red Bluff, got checked in, and rode away. Apparently, Mr. Hickey was there. In my defense, it was 10:30 pm and dark, but the reality is I was so focused on getting in and out of that checkpoint that I hardly looked up from my cockpit and paperwork. This was the only time my path crossed his and I blew it. But this wouldn't be my last mistake of the rally. Not by a long shot.
I think I enjoyed leg three the most. The Sierra Nevadas are magical for me. I absolutely love the contrast of the beautiful Ponderosa pine against the granite boulders. The rally continued on Hwy 36 in the Sierras toward Lassen National Park. The two bonii here included the afore mentioned Admin Building bonus and getting a picture of your bike in front of the "Road Closed" (due to snow) sign about 10 miles into the park. I wondered if some park ranger might take me down at gun point for suspiciously hanging around on the back door of a federal building in the middle of the night. I counted something on the order of 96 panes of glass and headed into the park. When I arrived at the blockade, I found a Polaroid of our very own George Zelena taped to the gate. The photo showed George with one of his fingers raised in the international sign for "You're number one". The words "You've been spanked" were written across the bottom. I found out after the rally that George had gone directly from Checkpoint one to Lassen just to be sure he was the first there and leave all his rally comrades this greeting. What a guy. Even with this little diversion, George would finish the rally in second place.
I collected a photo bonus of my bike in front of the small country store on Hwy 172 and then headed toward Greenville and a 500 point bonus. Several miles outside of town, Ken Meese, Jerry White and I chatted for a couple minutes as we waited to be let through a road construction zone. The deer were thick through this area. I must have seen 50. Ken was comfortable with a little more speed than Jerry and I, so we let him blaze the trail for us. I wouldn't see Ken again until the finish line. Jerry and I proceeded to Greenville where I made my second (or is that 10th?) mistake of the rally; I doubted Jerry. In Greenville, he took a hard turn east leaving town for parts unknown. I stopped, not willing to just blindly follow and let him lead me to victory ; ) Noooo, instead I had to ride around in circles for 5 minutes until I realized that waaaaay up on a pole in the center of town was a sign for the Peter Lassen Historical Marker, the bonus we were looking for. The arrow pointed exactly the direction that Jerry White had gone. Doh! On top of that, I then misread the sign. It indicated that the marker was 4 miles out of town; I read it as 6. Again, I wondered if the locals would call the cops as I cruised up and down that road looking for a historical marker that was actually 2 miles away from where I was looking. This whole fiasco cost me well into forty minutes of time. I finally found the marker and collected my points
I should take a brief moment to comment on the latest addition to my rally arsenal; high intensity discharge lighting. HIDs are the lights you see on some high end cars that appears a little bluish in color. I took the plunge and spend the money for a set of HID driving lights last winter. Boy, howdy, do these things work. The light the emit is whiter than halogen lamps and more closely mimics daylight. You can see them under the mirrors of my bike in the water crossing photo. I find myself wanting to ride at night just so I can use my high-tech driving lights. I will never go back, and am considering fitting my stock headlights with an HID conversion kit.
My good friend Brian Roberts was staffing checkpoint 3 with Alan Pratt. Every year, Alan test rides the rally the week before the event as a quality control measure. We discussed the fact that some, maybe several riders would not complete a thousand miles in the rally this year. The roads on the Lost Coast and Hwy 36 were just that slow. Since I was running late, I didn't hang around to chat. There were just over four hours left in the rally.
I feel that while a rally is only won with a good overall strategy, a rally can certainly be lost on the last leg. The temptation is to head to the barn too early. A rider is tired and motivation is low. This is a mistake. To finish well, a rider must finish strong. Leg four was my second best leg of the rally; only on leg two did I collect more points. Here's another secret for all you future rally riders; Sunday morning traffic is light. Given the choice to collect points in a metro area on a Saturday morning or a Sunday morning, choose Sunday. That's how I won the rally in 2003. It's amazing how light traffic was in downtown San Francisco at 9:30 on a Sunday. Anyway, I finished strong hitting my final bonus in the light, Sunday morning traffic of West Sacramento at 8:07 am, 53 minutes before the finish. The question was "In what year was the Bryce Water Treatment Facility expanded?" I stumbled my way into West Sacramento and pulled into the first convenience store I saw. I got off the bike and walked right over to a man in his mid-fifties who was gassing his car. "Excuse me, I'm on a motorcycle rally. You wouldn’t happened to know where the Bryce Water Treatment Plant is, would you?" Now, I want you to imagine, you filling your tank early one Sunday morning and some idiot in a flip up helmet and blood shot eyes tells you he needs to get to the sewer treatment plant. What would be your reaction? Well, the reaction of our good Samaritan was just what I wanted and needed to hear. " Oh yeah! Continue right down on Jefferson, turn left on Harbor Way and it's right under the I-80 bridge. You can't miss it". And he was right. You couldn't miss it. I filled in my answer at 8:07 am I had 53 minutes to get back to Dunnigan, about 40 miles away. I was feeling good.
What happened next is a moment that will live in my mind forever. I forgot to latch my Pelican case. I had reached in for a new set of earplugs and I forgot to re-latch the case. I noticed it 6 minutes later as I was merging onto I-5. My case top was flapping up and down in the 70 mph breeze. My heart sank. My stomach heaved. My head hurt. I pulled off to the side and looked in. It was gone. My envelope with three bonus photographs and one receipt was gone. About 800 points, I suspect. It was now 8:13. I had 47 minutes to make 40 highway miles. I would be docked 100 points a minute if I was late. It would take 5 minutes just to get turned around. The points in that envelope were history. I latched the case and re-mounted Moose. We cruised at the limit back to Dunnigan, checked ourselves in and explained to the scorer that even though the paperwork was filled out, there would be no photo bonuses. Now the only question was this: did I still have enough points for a top five finish? I would know in about three hours.
The final standings for the event are here https://www.cal24.com/cal2006.htm As you can see, I just missed a top 5 finish. I think the envelope incident cost me two places. Check out the points and you will see that Jeff Earls is a machine, cleaning everyone's clock but for George Z. During the rally I had thought about Jeff and his rally experience. Like I said, Earls has run 4 Iron Butt Rallies. That's four, 11 day events. I have participated in 7 rallies for a total of 9 days of experience. Earls has nearly five times that experience in just the IBM, let alone any of the 24 hour events he's done. I take some consolation in this fact.
Oh, and remember that little thing about reading comprehension. We all found out at the banquet that there was nothing in the bonus list that required us to jump into Berryesse Lake from the top of that 50 foot rock. We had all assumed that is what was meant. Lisa Stevens was the only one who asked and in fact, made a nice little dive into the lake from a dizzying height of about four feet. Reading comprehension is everything.
The 2006 Cal 24 was another great one. Geographically, California is without peer. I rode from the farmlands of the central valley, the Redwood Forests, the majesty of Lassen National Park, the artificial neon-glitz of a Nevada Casino to a Sacramento sewage treatment plant…all in one day. That is really what endurance rallies are all about.
