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Long Distance Reporter |
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June 2001 Volume 2, Number 2 =============
Get the Rollin' Dude Wallpaper Special for Rollin' readers
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B2 Does the "Rubber Chicken Strut"
Will
B2 See the Light... or not? We last left each other with me watching the calendar pages softly flutter down towards Thursday, April 27th, the day I would start my annual trek Westward to participate in one of the best LDR 24 hour rallies in all the IBA kingdom, the 2001 Waltz Across Texas Rally. This year I was remarkably ahead of the packing curve. In the couple days prior to departure, as I slowly butt surely packed away my normal rally/combat touring items on the bike, my eyes never stopped from falling a zillion times on my rubber chicken which lay on my official Peter Egan bike watching rocking chair in the garage. "If you don't watch out dumbass, you are gonna leave that damn thang sitting right there and not figger it out 'til your stupid butt is standing in the rally check-in line," I keep repeating to myself. Finally, the thought of this bothered me so badly, that I slide his little outstretched form into my sidebag, with him offering up a pathetic suffocating "blaaatttt..." as I closed the bag lid around him. You have heard me tell before of the fact that all Rallybastids come naturally supplied with a well developed twisted, sick, sense of humor, and none come better equipped with such than the illustrious Mr. Jack Tollett. You want proof? How 'bout him self-electing himself to the lofty position of President and CEO of the Texas Methane Producers? You need a further explanation of that? well... I think not. Suffice it to say that Jack and this merry band believe Burger King Onion Rings to be one of the world's most efficient forms of "fossil fuels." Last year, Jack displayed his special el-twisto humor by requiring us to bring a map of Egypt with us to the rally. That map served absolutely no purpose other than to fulfill one of his insane prerequisites to running the rally. This year he went even one better by requiring us to bring with us a Rubber Chicken. Little did I know then (and still can hardly believe now), what special surprises that chicken would have in store for me. As the day before departure arrived and I began to run my route out on MopNGlo in preparation for loading it into the Street-pilot, I began to get retchingly nauseous. Dear God, not again. Bro' Lord, Pahleese don't toss me into that there briar patch of I-10 no more... my brain was already doing the bumpa-bump-a-bumpa-SLAM! boogie in anticipation of traveling this tax money forsaken stretch of "roadway" just this once too many-eth of a time. Damn, there just has to be a better way. I put the call out to the LDR email list for anyone to come to the rescue with some route that would have most of my bike parts and my one remaining kidney (the other one's still out there on I-10 somewhere) intact when I pulled into Longview. I was just mildly calmed when I realized that the Worst of I-10, the stretch truly earning it's nickname given by me of "Tallulah Gorge Blvd." (Tallulah Gorge is this little ditch in North Georgia, drop by there someday, maybe then you'll understand) actually lay further West of Lafayette, LA, where I would be making my turn Northward towards Shreveport, LA, and my last turn Westward to Longview. It took only a couple hours for Steve, a Moto Guzzi rider from the LDR list to come to my rescue with a wonderful mega-multi-turned route that would take me off I-10 just before it crossed into Louisiana and through the last 450 miles of so of the trip out over some of the twistiest and most scenic roads in the state. It would even take me pretty close to two Louisianan LDR buddies, Terry Meek and Bart Welter, assuming I was in their areas at some semblance of a rational hour. His routing would even offer up the chance for the Barfrocket and I to take our first ferry ride. Needless to say, I was totally stoked at the prospect of this much more refreshing and less punishing route. I'd sooner stand in line for a chicken not-so-tender buffet, have myself a second anus drilled and buy myself a Beemer than ride any more of I-10 than I had to. I counted up the turns on his route; there were 19 of them! I then started to try and follow them out on my bo-fficial Wally-World Rand McNally atlas. Oh Man, after the second turn only about 2 of the remaining 17 roads were even listed, so I reverted to my full sheet, regular fold-out map of LA. I didn't even bother to run this route out on MopNGlo or try to load it into the Street-pilot as I knew that hardly any of these minor roads would even be in the SP's base memory. At about 8 PM the night before I was to leave, I just hotlighted the route out on the map, popped myself a frosty Old Mil light, and sat back and stared at the map in blissful anticipation. After 3 years of doing LDR rides, finally, I am able to calm down enough the night before to get a decent night's sleep and the crack of 8AM came way too early. The bike was already packed and with just a short, record 4.5 hrs. of screwing off, I was finally pulling the bike out of the garage at the early hour of noon-thirty. I seem to never be able to learn that the later I start, the later I get there and am able to see my buddies. I'm convinced that Airyn "Come-on-Lemme-Sleep-Dammit" Darling infected me with this little malady the first time she hugged me back in Raleigh-Durham 3 years ago. I sure the hell hope I figure out the cure to this before about the 4th week in August. I pulled out onto I-95 North into a beautiful Florida day wondering how long it would last. For the past week on the Chatty Morons list the subject of the upcoming Waltz weather forecasts had come up several times. While this time of year in Texas is supposed to be rather temperate, this has not been the case historically during the running of the rally. We all only half joke that Jack goes down to Mexico and makes a financial contribution to some medicine man he knows down there. Past Waltzes have seen day long high winds, severe thunderstorms, flash floods, dust storms, multiple dust devils in a row bearing down on riders and swarms of locusts. It's almost funny except when you're the one riding through the middle of all that. This year, the talk was that spendthrift Jack had slackened up on his offering as the weather for the full week around the Waltz, in virtually the entire area it was to be run, was forecast to be fantastic. Yeah right, I'd believe it when I saw it. Actually, I had packed quite optimistically. Mostly long-sleeved rally t-shirts for the low to mid 80's days and with the mid-upper 50's forecast for the nights. I'd even planned to leave my flannel top and bottom and polyprop long johns at home. I wasn't totally optimistic however, for I rarely leave on a trip of any length without my Widder vest and gloves (which would Definitely come in handy later on!). I was making good time, and with the new fuel cell, made it all the way past Tallahassee before I had to stop for gas, a total of 330 miles! This was great progress from the pre-cell 240 mile intervals and was even a decent time and place to finally stop and gas up as I was starting to stiffen up a little. With almost 5 hours between gas stops, I had to find a new way to feed myself enroute verses grabbing a mouthful at each gas stop every couple hours like I had been doing without the addition of the cell. In my left riding jacket pocket I had my three bags of munchies, beef jerky, dried mixed fruit and dried cranberries. With some determination, I was able to lock the throttle down, remove my left glove and hold it against the right clip-on and reach in and extract a handful without anything blowing away in the wind. I popped a little down the front of my helmet, stuck out my tongue and caught it and we were good to go, the cranberries were the only thing that presented any difficulty as I seemed to lose about 20% of them between the helmet and the tongue, a finishing splash of ice water from my drinking system and I was a happy camper. As I neared Pensacola, with the sun sinking toward the horizon, I began to get this sinking feeling in my stomach. I had felt this before a couple times on my Katana. The sun was just low enough that I should be able to see a bit of headlight reflection off the road in front of me and there wasn't any. Oh man, no! I flicked the high/low beam switch with no noticeable difference. Crap! I had also learned the very hard way on the Kat, that the smart thing to do now was to pull over and deal with this as soon as I even began to think I was noticing it, instead of riding on until it was dark enough for me to be convinced. While it was still light enough to work on the bike, I pulled over to check things out. I walked to the front of the bike and sure enough, there were no lights, either on high beam or low. Always trying to check the easiest thing first, I pulled the side panel to check the headlight fuse and my heart sank when I held it up and saw that it was fine. The chances of both the high and low beam of the headlight bulb blowing within a couple hours was slim and there was not much more that I myself was capable of doing anything about. I pulled the headlight bulb and cussed under my breath when it turned out to be ok too. I checked my watch and since it was about 8 PM Melbourne time, I knew that any bike shops in the Pensacola area would be closed, there was nothing to do butt press onward, relying totally on the auxiliary Hellas for lighting. As I passed through Pensacola and headed toward Mobile, it began to get real dark and I got even more concerned, the Hellas didn't seem to be putting out near as much light as I had remembered at home. In fact, so little light that it almost bordered on being unsafe to continue. I decided to stop in Mobile at this BBQ jurnt at Tillman's Corner, grab a bite to eat and think this one through. I pulled up in front of the Q jurnt just in time to flip up my visor and watch the girl behind the door click the lock shut. Damn! Once again, on the umpteenth trip, I cussed myself under my helmet for having gotten such a late start. I fired back up and motored just a few more yards down the road to an "Awful House." There didn't really look like there was much more than fast food and Chinese places around here and some eggs, coffee, and country ham would suit me just fine. As the brewed caffeine began to clear the cobwebs a bit, I began to analyze this sorry state of affairs. If I did not get this headlight matter resolved I was totally screwed, there was no way I could run for 24 hours around Texas with just auxiliary lights even with them burning at full strength, which they definitely weren't right now, after all, they are called "auxiliary" lights now, aren't they? The next most obvious point was that my neat, much anticipated back roads route through LA was completely out the window, it would just have to wait for another trip, sticking to the Interstate with this diminished lighting would be much safer. I laid out my LA state map and slipped on my official Chatty Moron Minister of Time and Distance Calculations clear green cypherin' visor and got to work. Baton Rouge and Shreveport seemed the two biggest towns along my route that were likely to have one or more Kawasaki shops. However, I'd be in BR in just a few hours and even though I could use some sleep, that would still leave 4-5 hours to go to get to Longview which might put me there much later Friday afternoon than I wanted to arrive. A semi-firm plan was formalized to head straight to Shreveport and try to get the headlight fixed, I figured if worse came to worse and they were not able to do a "professional" repair job, I could get some wire and a switch from a "Rat Shack" in Longview and just wire the headlight socket straight to the battery with a switch to turn it off when I stopped, It'd be nasty example of LDR technology butt It would work. There's more than one way to skin a cat, butt he still don't like it. I paid my tab, slammed that last 1/2 a cup of joe and hit the highway. I banked onto I-10 West feeling a might better than when I'd gotten off it. I had me a plan that looked promising, and a brainstorm worst case scenario that would still enable me to have headlights enough to run the rally one way or the other. All I had to do now was bust fanny for these last 550 miles, squinting into semi-darkness the whole way and be sittin' at the dealership I hoped would be in town when they opened. Piece a cake. I was barely into Mizzippi when that wrenching in the gut returned. I sure thought I had noticed the Hellas flick from dim to dimmer then back to dim again. Yep, dammit, there they went again, it was not my figmagnation. Dear God, what now? A quick glance at the dash lights showed them to be as bright as usual, I turned the blinkers on and they seemed to be cycling at their normal speed. Whew! At least to me, that seemed to indicate a problem with the Hellas and not some major charging system or battery problem, especially since the bike had fired right up just a few minutes before in Mobile. There was not much I could do about the flickering Hellas butt steam on ahead and hoped they stayed on to some degree. I began to think of what I'd do if they went out all the way. For good! I decided I'd get behind a trucker, get on the CB and explain my predicament and ask him if I could assume the wing slot beside and to the rear of him and use his lights to guide my way. Man, I sure hoped it didn't have to come to that. Back before I started LDR-ing, and started trips fully prepared with extra bulbs, I had once ridden from Jacksonville to Daytona in the dark, with no lights at all behind a semi, and I was definitely not ready for an instant replay. I was gonna get to Shreveport in time for that shop (that was maybe there) to open if I had to push this damn bike all the way there. It wouldn't be too long before I was real glad I'd thought ahead. Going over that monster ass bridge spanning the Mississippi River in the middle of Baton Rouge, the damn Hellas went dark and stayed that way. Luckily, there was no traffic anywhere nearby and the road was lit up well enough for me to not ride off the side and down into the drink, needless to say, I peeled off at the first exit where there were some gas stations. I pulled the seat and the side panel off and checked all the Hella connections I could get to, they all seemed fine to me. I buttoned everything back up and went to check out the phonebook for Kawi shops. There were two of them in town, butt then I remembered the idle hours sitting here waiting for sun-up and the shops to open along with the late arrival to Longview. If the lights would just come back on, I really needed to get to Shreveport. I thumbed the starter and hit the Hellas and they came back on, though still in their 2/3's dimmed condition. With just 1/2 a sigh of relief I pulled back onto I-10 West. Luckily, I didn't let out too much of a breath, I'd need every bit of it about 5 minutes later when the Hellas went out again, this time, so did the radio as it's backlight began to flicker and my helmet speakers flooded with static. This is really starting to piss me off! I reach up to turn off the CB and my hand falls across the top of the radio and the coax antenna connection. Just then, the Hellas went to FULL BRIGHT and the FM radio came back in strong and clear! What the hell?! I jiggled the CB coax and everything went on-off-on-off-on-off all over again. AhHa! Eur-freakin-reka! As soon as I released the coax the Hellas went back to dim and starting flickering on and off again, I wasn't sure what was going on, butt it sure seemed to have something to do with the antenna coax. I pulled off at the next exit and found that the CB antenna coax was just barely hanging on it's connector to the radio, I screwed it back in and torqued it down good and fired the bike back up. Halleluiah!! FULL Factory Bright Hellas, and a crystal clear FM radio signal! I didn't really know what had happened, butt it appeared to be some major system grounding situation with the CB coax (I still haven't figured this totally out to this day, butt Larry Buck and I sure am going to!). I pulled back onto I-10 for that last 50 miles or so to the turn Northward onto I-49 and the last 220 miles into Shreveport. Finally after about 350 miles of squinting into semi darkness, I could actually see where the hell I was going for a change. I was elated with this major step forward in progress and the Barfrocket and I flew at near Big Peach Nominal speed towards the 1/2 way point to Shreveport at Alexandria. (Yall know I just ain't lucky enough for this to stay this way, doncha?) About an hour later, 20 miles South of Alexandria, either the Good Lord above or maybe his subterranean ex-sidekick decided to have a little more fun with their B2 doll and jabbed another big ole hatpin completely through it. The Hellas started flickering full on and full off again. Ok dammit, this is gettin' about stupid! I reach up and fiddle with the CB antenna again, uhoh... it's just as snug as when I torqued it down earlier near Lafayette and the fiddlin' didn't affect the flickerin' any. I let all the air out of me in one big exhale of frustration. Shit! What Now?! Though the Hellas hadn't dimmed all the way they had started out at, they were now flickering the same way they had been with the loose antenna wire. Hmm. At about 4:30 in the morning with about 900 miles done, I pulled over at Alexandria to try and figure out what to do next. I gassed up, had me a cup of coffee and sat down to think. Well, there's only one point left in the antenna line that could have a problem unless the line was cut somehow and if that had happened, I didn't think I'd have any radio or Hellas at all. I got out my official Larry Buck Walgreen's gooseneck flashlight and went to the back of the bike near the CB antenna itself. I jiggled the CB antenna and it seemed nice and tight. Crap. Then, I turned the bike ignition and Hellas on and jiggled it again, Hellas=flicker-flicker-flicker, AhHa! (Again!) I really can't believe I'd figured this out all by myself, Again. When Larry and I had put on the CB antenna after mounting the auxiliary fuel tank, the mount for the antenna was a tad too long and the antenna was almost touching the tank. I looked at Larry then and told him I didn't want to take a chance on the antenna mount shifting any and rubbing through the powder coat on the tank, so I had wrapped the bottom of the antenna with a couple go rounds of electrical tape. The mount had seemed real snug then and I really didn't think it was going to move then like it had obviously done now. It seemed the antenna had finally worn a spot through the tape and the powder coat and was grounding out the full auxiliary light and radio system against the fully grounded fuel tank. (I know this makes no sense at all, butt that didn't stop it from being the right answer.) I got out my large roll of black Tollett (duct) Tape and put two nice 2" square patches between the CB antenna and the auxiliary fuel tank and turned the Hellas back on, Prestomongo! We have max "luminums"! I walked around the parking lot finishing my coffee and felt a full ton of weight lift from my shoulders. Someway, and I really not sure how, I knew then beyond a shadow of a doubt that I had fixed this problem with the Hellas for this trip, at least until I could get home to fully check it out once and for all. For someone who has the mechanical abilities and aptitude of a nightcrawler, I was pretty damn happy with myself. here was actually one good point in the past 10 hours of mental anguish worrying about what was going to happen bad next and the brain exercise of figuring out what to do about it when it did, and that was I really hadn't had the spare time to get tired or sleepy. This was a beautiful thing. I finished my coffee, helmeted back up and pulled the Barfrocket back onto I-49 North for the last couple of hours to Shreveport. I was actually in pretty good shape, I felt fine for having been on the bike for about 16.5 hours and felt more than cognizant enough to be able to explain the problems to the wrench once I got to the bike shop. As expected, I had no further problems with the Hellas, they lit up the road in front of me just fine, now at their full strength, I almost didn't even miss having the main headlight. For the first time this whole trip, I actually had a few truckers flash their lights at me. I just got on the CB and said, "You gotchur motorcycle here with those bright drivin' lights, sorry yall, that's all the light's I got," every one of the drivers came back with a "no problem there motorcycle man" or something to that effect. As I edged closer to Shreveport, I felt my face smile and push against the cheekpads of my helmet. I was getting ready to experience one of the more sacred moments to LDR's -- the sunrise and start of another fresh day after riding continuously through the night. As is usually the case, it has a very cleansing effect, seeming to just wash all the problems and concerns of the prior day away. You ride through the darkness butt are able to just barely pick up the graying edges of light around the horizon. I kept looking over my right shoulder and into my right mirror, it seemed the sun would be rising at about a 5 o'clock position behind me, and I kept a constant vigil, checking and rechecking the gray as it turned a lighter and lighter shade. Soon just the hint of one small spot of orange appeared at about the prior estimated 5 o'clock position to my rear, just above the line of light gray and immediately warmth from even that smallest slither of sunlight to come began to soak straight through my Motoport and displace the dark dreariness of worry and concern I had ridden through the whole night long. As the blackness gave way to lighter gray, I began to pick out some of the scenery to the sides of the interstate. I curiously squinted trying to pick out more detail, as I'd never ridden through this part of Louisiana before. Luckily this early dawn, the traffic was very light, as my eyes seemed drawn to the contrasting landscape off the roadway side. There were rolling hills and wooded areas just behind the swampy bayou just to the sides of me with it's mangrove (?) stumps poking up out of the water with somewhat spooky tendrils of rising fog coming off it. With all this beauty surrounding me and the growing murmur of a now definite top of a rising orange pinkish red orb behind me whispering into my ears, it took a conscious effort to return to and maintain the discipline of at least an abbreviated forward scan for LEO's, traffic conditions and a sweep across the dash with its glowing amber and red displays of the Streetpilot and Valentine. On
one of these scans, I caught just the flicker of moving white through the
wood line of the median way up ahead and to my left. "Bogies-11
o'clock," I thought to myself as I rolled off the throttle to just a
few mph over the posted limit and began to search out more detail from the
white splotch moving parallel and ahead of me. Just as I passed him, I
caught what looked like the golden official "county mountie"
seal on the door of the vehicle and immediately the Valentine display
changed from "A" to "1" and the strength counter at
the bottom pegged, screaming it's warning to slow things down butt quick.
Sometimes the human brain is just a tad quicker than manmade electronics. As I returned to reallocating my attention between trying to keep the Barfrocket in pretty much the same area of one lane, the scenery and the escalating pink and red glow behind me, a new visual distraction appeared in the form of vibrant splashes of colorful wildflowers alongside the road. This piqued urges from my bygone days as a photographer to attempt to capture the visuals and emotion of the moment and I began to try and find someplace to pull over and make a couple pictures. I pulled off at the next exit and coasted to a
stop well off the exit lane figuring I'd have myself some breffas while I
was shooting some pics. I started my morning meal Barely 20 miles out of Shreveport, signs of civilization began to replace the swampy bayou and soon a sign appeared announcing "Shreveport-Next 5 exits." The first exit was still pretty desolate while the second had several gas stations, eateries and hotels so that's where I peeled off, not to get gas, even though I was getting pretty low, butt mainly to find a phonebook and hopefully a nearby Kawi shop. If they were going to have to pull my main tank, I knew they'd appreciate it not being full of 35lbs of petrol. Apparently the man upstairs was appreciative of my recent clean living and decided to smile down upon me for a change this trip. There was a Kawi/Beemer shop barely two blocks away on the same road I had exited onto and I rolled into the parking lot of Shreveport Motorsports just 10 minutes after they'd opened for business. With the GPS showing 1050 miles in 20 hours, I peeled my ragged ass of the Barfrocket, put on my very best "woe is me" face and stumbled in the front door looking for the most "in charge" looking person I could find. My eyes immediately fell on, and I introduced myself to Don Roark, one of the owners of Shreveport Motorsports. Without giving him much of a chance to say anything back, I began to explain what a deep pile of stanky doodoo I was in. As soon as I mentioned that I was on my way to Longview to ride in an IBA sanctioned rally, Don came back with, "Oh, you must be headin' to the Waltz Across Texas Rally". Turns out, not only was Don familiar with the rally, he also knew a couple more LDR's that I knew including my buddy there in Shreveport and past WAT rally-ist Bart Welter. Don and I both had a couple of yucks at Bart's expense and Don sent me straight back to the shop to find Matt and Jeremy, his two mechanics, after first calling back there and telling them to do whatever it took to get me back on the road, ASAP. I began to peel off the side panels and tankbag while Matt checked out the headlight Hi/Low switch, it tested out ok, that was too bad, it would have been the easiest to troubleshoot and repair. Matt then enlisted the help of Jeremy and before long they were able to diagnose the problem as a fried Reserve Lighting Relay, which is part of the infamous "j-box" on the Connie. (The "j-box" is a combination of the main fuse box, some circuit boards, and some relays all of which are integrated together to form the "j-box".) Unfortunately, they did not have a j-box in stock and none of the major components of it are easily removable or replaceable. The Reserve Lighting Relay turns off the headlights when the bike is being started to provide full voltage to the starter. The j-box is known by those in COG as having some inherent problems with some of its internal solder joints, and this was suspected of having caused the failure. Jeremy came up with the bright idea to identify and jumper across the fried relay which would have the effect of having the headlights on during starting butt at least I would have full normal operation of both the high and low beams. Ya-Hoo! We also decided to reroute the power source for the auxiliary lighting relay to my auxiliary fuse block and relay it as Larry and I would have done in BO-ca had we not run out of time. The Service Manager and Don cut me a little slack on the final bill and at about 12:30, I was pulling out of their parking lot heading just a couple of blocks North to I-20 West and the last 50 miles to Longview, Texas. I must pause here a moment to profusely thank Don, Matt and Jeremy of Shreveport Motorsports once more, they were paramount in getting me back into condition to be able to run the rally. Without their help, it would have been much later in the day before I would have been able to get to that condition and it would not have been near the pretty solution they came up with. Thank You Again So Very Much Guys!
Photo courtesy of Mark Johnson Finally, oh so Finally, at about 1:30, I pulled into the parking lot of the Parkridge Hotel that was already filling up quickly with rally bikes and riders. I was greeted by Jack's rally volunteers and told to take my check-in paperwork, required maps of Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, and Oklahoma along with my Rubber Chicken and proceed to the rally check-in area. As I pulled in, I recognized Andrew Duthrie's Connie and parked beside him, Andrew was another Chatty Moron and a volunteer for this rally.
Photo courtesy of Tracy Horstman Before
I could even get off my bike, I noticed
several other Moron bikes with their riders in the parking lot and delayed
my going to check-in to shake their hands and give the Standard Moron
Greeting (If you don't know, you'll just have to see it happen some day!)
to Mark, Terry, Roy, Greg, Gregory, Andrew and Joel. Authors note; This
rally would truly be a "Moron Rich Environment", fully 1/5th of
the total number of riders/volunteers would be Chatty Morons!
Photo courtesy of Tracy Horstman I grabbed all my stuff and stumbled into the hotel and the check-in conference room. One of the volunteers was ready to sit me down and get to work, butt looking up and seeing Mrs. Tollett nearby, [Andrews Jacks Boss jpg] that would just have to wait a minute as I walked over and gave her a big "sure-is-glad-to-see-ya!" hug. With that greeting I sat down, had my Chicken confiscated (which I was not terribly happy about), had all my paperwork checked and was directed to the Command Suite of our illustrious Rallybastid Jack Tollett for the final inspection of license and insurance paperwork. Authors
Note; That sly dawg Jack. On the Moron List, I had proposed that we Morons
sit together at the riders meeting Friday night, bring our Rubber
chickens, most of which squawked when you squeezed them, and use them to
make our voices heard in unison should Jack tell us anything we didn't
want to hear, kind of a Moron Rubber Chicken Choir. :) Jack's idea to
confiscate our Chickens at check-in nipped this little plan in the bud.
Photo Courtesy of Andrew Duthie I made my way to Jack's room, gave him a hearty hand shake and a loud Moron Greeting and finished up my rally check-in with him. It was then I learned that I would be rooming with Terry Smith, another Moron and co-owner of Sampson Sport Touring, the supplier of the prototype fuel cell now attached to the back of the Barfrocket. While I would have been happy rooming with most any of the Morons or other rally riders, Jack would have been hard pressed to find two more compatible roomies than Terry and I.
Photo courtesy of Mark Johnson At this time, I was nearing 30 hrs with not a wink of sleep butt before I could even take a short nap, I really needed to get my odometer check accomplished so I headed back out to the parking lot. We had our starting figures taken and were directed to ride 11 miles South down the highway that faced the Hotel, make a u-turn and head back to have our finishing figures taken. There is almost no reason to check my odometer as it is dead, spot on, over several 500 mile runs that I had checked it against the GPS, it usually varies by no more than a couple tenths of a mile. In fact, on returning from the odo check, I was informed that my odometer was one of the most accurate that had been checked. Finally with my check-in finished and greetings of all my friends accomplished, I made my way to Terry's and my room for a quick shower and short two hour nap, on the way, I grabbed Terry and asked him to wake me up at 4:45. I had already met a local in the parking lot as he was admiring the Barfrocket and had gotten the directions to one of the best BBQ Jurnts in town. If I got up at 4:45, I'd have just enough time to corral me some Morons for some BBQ and make in back just before the 7 PM mandatory riders meeting.
Photo Courtesy of Andrew Duthie It seemed about 5 minutes after my head hit the pilla that Terry was hollerin' at me to get up, it was almost 5 o'clock! I rounded me up some Morons, relayed what turned out to be some pretty crappy directions to the Q jurnt and Terry and I head off to meet them for supper. Along the way, courtesy of the aforementioned mis-directions we got turned around in downtown Longview. Spying a pick-up full of locals, I hollered out the car winda, "Which way to Bodacious?!" (the BBQ place). They hollered back the corrections to our directions and in just a minute we pulled into the parking lot. Doncha know it, the locals always know how to get to the good BBQ! Shortly, we had us a nice group of Morons chowing down, we could barely squeeze Terry, Mike Sachs, Billy "Mad Dawg" Street, Joel, Gregory and myself in at the table, butt squeeze us all in we did. The funniest thing happened while we were eating. I will omit the names to protect the guilty butt we Morons know what we need to know. One of our merry band has a very "farkled out" ST1100 that doesn't get ridden near as much as it should. Part of being a Moron is to give as many constant digs and grief to each other as you possibly can, so you get pretty good with this crowd at givin' it out and takin' back in with a grin! We all are constantly ribbing our buddy here for not riding his bike as we would if it were ours.
Photo Courtesy of Andrew Duthie As we were eating, some local comes in and asked us, "Which one of yall has that NEW ST out there?" Now, this Moron's ST is actually 3 years old butt has barely 8 thousand miles on it (at the start of the Waltz anyway). This low mileage Moron just dropped his blushing face in embarrassment... when we told the local guy, "New, HELL!, that thang is 3 years old!" He came back with, "Gosh, MY ST is just one year old and has That Many miles on it!". We thought our ST Moron was gonna drill himself right into the floor of the restaurant! He was positive that we had set him up, butt the funniest thing about it was that we hadn't, THAT time anyway. We finished up and headed back to the hotel, as it was nearly time for the riders meeting.
Photo Courtesy of Andrew Duthie I grabbed myself a cool one, headed into the already packed conference room for the riders meeting and plopped masef down next to the "Alabama Gang", fellow Moron, Greg "RallyTallyMan" Roberts and his Alyerbamian cohort and fella Beemer pilot, John Harrison.
Photo Courtesy of Andrew Duthie Usually, we don't see any of the kids from the Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children until the last day of the rally at the banquet, butt this year, Jack and Paula had the nicest surprise in store for us.
Photo Courtesy of Andrew Duthie Jack introduced us to Blaine, a patient of the hospital, his friend and Blaine's Mom, all of whom would be staying the weekend to meet all the riders and enjoy the festivities of the rally. Little Blaine was the coolest kid and Jack let us all know that it was Blaine's biggest desire to get a ride on a motorcycle while he was there. He Especially Wanted to get a ride on a big, bad, loud Harley Davidson.
Photo Courtesy of Andrew Duthie Jack made this announcement and plans began to solidify to ensure that Master Blaine would get his wish. Jack made his normal "keep the speeding down folks and be sure to pull over to help another rider if necessary" speech and pointed out "Getz" one of his rally radar rangers and an off duty LEO, who would be out and about along the rally route with his little Stalker radar gun to ensure that we did just that.
Photo Courtesy of Andrew Duthie With a room full of foaming at the mouth, rally ridin' dawgs, Jack mercifully cut the speechin' short and passed out our rally bonus books. When I got mine, my mouth almost hit the floor. There were almost 70 named bonuses, not counting the 2 mandatory stops at Russellville, Arkansas and Denison, Texas, and about 20 more "get-'em-anywhere-you-can-bonuses." This was almost DOUBLE the normal amount of boni to select from for a 24 hour rally. Jack had given each of his rally dawgs a nice big ole piece of freshly waxed rope and lasso for each of us to hang our own asses with! With this many boni to select from, it would be SO EASY to bite off more than you could chew and still be miles away from the barn when the 24 hour clocked made those final tics down to "you're SOL!" too late. Noticing that everybody had their noses buried in their rally books and probably weren't listening much any more to him anyway, Jack quickly went over each of the boni, noting that they were grouped by state for easier reference and released his baying rally hounds back to their rooms for a few hours of maddening route planning. Rest assured, I was one of the first out the door. During last year's Waltz, my good Texan buddy, fella Moron, and rider of a most magnificently prepared Goldwing 1500 Battlestar, Mark "Bounce" Johnson, and I had roomed together and combined our efforts to plan out our routes together. We made a pretty good team at this and had planned to do the same for this year's Waltz. Two more good friends of mine, Billy "MadDawg" Street and Mike Sachs (yet Another fella Moron) had ridden to this year's dance together from Hotlanta. Mike was one of Jack's volunteers, while Billy would be riding in this, his first 24 hr. rally. (Billy scored a fantastic top 10 finish in his first rally attempt last year during the 11 hr. Feast in the East.) Bounce and I had invited MadDawg to join us in our annual route planning "map orgy" to be held in Mark's room which we had redesignated the "War Room". So, armed with a healthy supply of markers, maps, Bounce's and Billy's laptops, and an ample supply of cigarettes, cigars and cold beer, we retire to the War Room for a few hours of a marking and mapping frenzy. Soon the smoke began to waft and the beer began to flow and every available, and I do mean every available inch of the War Room was covered with unfolded mappage. This year was even a little worse here than normal as we would each be working with at least 3 state maps. Mark began to use his laptop and mapping program to locate and enter the coordinates for each bonus while MadDawg and I actually annotated each stop on the maps. My part of this was made a little more complicated by the fact that I would be marking both Bounce's and my own maps. It quickly began to resemble some convoluted game of "Map Twister." There were a few of Jack's boni that were obviously "sucker boni," ones that there was no way you'd have time to get such as Branson, MO, and Graceland in Memphis, TN. Even eliminating what we thought to be the obvious sucker boni, we still had more than our hands full getting all the boni located and marked on the maps. I had planned to try and be in bed for some much needed sleep as soon after midnight as possible. With barely 2 hours sleep in the past almost 40 hrs, I HAD to get some rest before the rally started the next morning. As 11:30 crept up on us, we still had a few more boni to log and had yet to start actually working on a route itself. This was not good, we were running out of time, we'd soon be at the point where each more minute spent planning would mean one more minute less of much needed sleep. The whole time we had been frantically locating and marking boni, a few words that Jack had said during our riders meeting just would not leave my head. These were that we would be riding little if any 4 lane roads and that when he had ridden the base route (and of course he failed to clue us in on the exact route he had run), it had taken him about 17 hrs and that was with no stopping for boni. I had myself a brainstorm. "Mark," I said, "run us out a route from Longview to Russellville to Denison to Longview and use the quickest route option and tell me what it says." A few keystrokes later, I glance over to see Bounce staring back at me with a wicked look in his eyes. "A little over 700 miles, total time with no stops, 20 hours," he said. Now I knew that Mark had plugged in some very conservative speeds for the back roads into his mapping program and taking that into account, it looked like maybe we had stumbled on Jack's base route. I told Mark to read us out the routing and the three of us followed it out on our maps. In just the first few minutes I was already grinning, there were loads of bonus all along this very route and a lot more not that far off it. As Mark read off the last portion of the routing back to Longview and paused, I looked up to see all three of us staring at each of with these stupid, "yep, that's it!" looks on our faces. The 20 hours that Mark had rang up on the laptop would more than account for time for stopping for each of the boni, gas stops, and still allow some time for extra boni snagging near our route. I asked Mark to compute out the miles and some "drop dead" times for each corner of our routing and wrote these figures at each of the route corners on my maps. We now had the times at each corner that we had to leave by in order to get back on time. (This would later turn out for me to be possibly the most important routing move of the evening.) I looked at the 2 other grinning faces in the room and said, "Don't know 'bout y'all, butt I think I'm looking right at My route for the rally." We were all in agreement with this assessment and Mark read us out the routing once more while we hotlighted it on our maps. I was surprised after no sleep, to be able to follow him and mark out 6 different maps at the same time, even thought I think I lost Billy under the pile of maps for a few minutes. I would get up in the morning with enough time to come back and use Mark's laptop to upload just the locations for the boni anywhere near this route and use the GPS in conjunction with the hotlighted maps as I rode. I bid my cohorts in crime a "haster ler vister" and stumbled, and I do mean stumbled back to Terry's and my room, a glance at my Citizen Wingmaster showed 5 minutes after 12. I almost did a double take thinking that I'd actually get 5.5 hrs of sleep before the morning riders meeting, easily the most sleep for the night before any rally I'd ridden so far. I entered the room to find my roomie sawing some serious logs on his bed and thought to myself, "What the hell has he got to be so tired from?!" forgetting all about the hustle and bustle from earlier in the day. I popped one last cool one for the evening and reached for the phone to call in a wake-up call for 5:30. Crap. The damn phone was deader than Methuselah's father. I got up and walked all the way to the front office to tell them to Pahleese turn the phone on and gave them a verbal request for the wake up call. Back in the room, I sat on the edge of the bed, finished my beer and thought about the routing we had just done. I was happy. We done good. We had more than enough boni to keep us busy and plenty of emergency outs to use if we somehow ran short on time. I rolled over, put my head against the pillow and wondered if throughout the night I've have pleasant dreams or a nightmare. Guess you'll just have to tune in next month to find out. B2 is clear the active. |
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