For the ride home we picked the scenic (read twisty) route where possible, avoiding the slab (highway).

The video below includes 15 minutes of footage along US Route 311 in Virginia headed towards West Virginia.

Footage shot with a ContourHD camera.

Yeah, I know the sound is out of sync (thanks iMovie).   But it gives you a good idea of why we do this (or maybe why some people don’t).  I don’t claim to be any good at this video editing thing.

Enjoy…

Truth be told, the factory/stock headlights on the Yamaha FJR1300 are pretty darn good.  I did replace the factory bulbs with some ‘better’ brighter halogen bulbs when it was new.

I also added lower fork mounted lights.  Initially MotoLights[TM], but in 2009 I won a set of Glenda Clearwater lights at the Eastern Owners meet.   These lights (as well as the moto lights), while they do illuminate things up close, and fill in the void near the bike, they really don’t throw any appreciable light down the road.   The are mostly ‘see me’ lights.  Lights there for the benefits of others so they can see me.   The lower mounted lights help break up the ‘single’ light that makes distance harder to judge and make me stand out more.  They help, a lot, but people will still pull out in front of me, even with my high viz jacket.

Anyway, on to today’s project.   While riding rallies that require us to ride 24 hours a day we ride at night a lot.   Often on twisty mountain roads.   It’s often darker than dark.  While the stock headlights are good, it’s still pretty easy to out ride your lights.

With the upcoming Void Rally and others on tap, specifically the 2012 MD2020 which will be almost ALL mountain roads I decided it was time to add some Auxiliary Lighting.

The number 1 self contained HID for this type of application is the Soltek Fuego’s.  While they have gotten cheaper (now $320 each instead of $500 each), a pair is still north of $600 plus hardware.

The next best thing, is the Chinese Knock Off’s.   They can be had via Amazon for $120 each or there about.  Hella also offers these same lights with their name on them.

So $240 sounds a whole lot better to me that $600.   Allegedly they put out about 90% of the light of the Soltek’s at less than 1/3rd the price. 

I lucked into a deal and got a pair used from an FJR forum member.  

The next puzzle is where to mount them on the FJR.  The FJR doesn’t really lend itself to lots of mounting spaces, and these lights are LARGE.

The standard approach is using a set of brackets that mount the lights under the mirrors, using the mirror mounts.   That works well for some of the smaller lights but doesn’t work real well for these larger lights or the Solteks.   The other problem with that location is that a simple parking lot tip over (and I’ve had a few in the years that I’ve owned the FJR) will likely break or smash one of your $300+ lights.

I was struggling to find a solution, then ran into Alex’s Brackets.  These brackets were made specifically for these lights or Solteks.  Mounting them above the mirrors instead.  This is good for both tip over protection and getting the lights as high as possible.

I received my brackets, and a spare set of left hand controls off a wreck on ebay for cheap to mount the switch (in case I messed it up), and fabricated a wiring harness.

Since I do have the Twisted Throttle Mirror Extensions, I did have to ‘tweak’ the brackets a bit.   Nothing a little bench grinder can’t take care of.  Repainted them and viola Done.

Mounted them up today and now I can’t wait until it gets dark

Had to increase the relief for the windshield.

Had to grind a little relief for the mirror extensions.

Had to come up with about a 3/8 inch spacer, ended up using 5 fender washers.

Touch up paint on the brackets and washers once finished.

Added this toggle switch to the back of my left hand controls.  This On-Off-On switch, turns the lights (On when the bike has power – Off – On with the High Beams).

More photos available on PicasaWeb.

If you already know what a Motorcycle Endurance Rally is.  Maybe because you read my report form last year (2010) or 2009 you can skip this section and go straight to the Ride report.   Otherwise, the basics are explained in the (2010) report.

This year’s rally them was the 500.

A Racing theme, no the rally still isn’t a race but the bonus location were race related.  Race tracks, and race teams, race horses, and race things in general.

We were given the bonus locations a week a head of time.  There’s software we use to sort and organize the bonus locations and place them on a map for route figuring.   We color code them based up on value.  This year the values were *special*, in that most were worth less than (1) point.  Like .66 or 1.05 or something silly.  Why is this important?  For one it breaks the excel macro’s for color coding and it just sucks to ride a bunch of miles for like 18 points.

Once the bonuses were fixed and plotted the looked like so:

(Click for larger image)

Rally HQ was Hagerstown MD.

Essentially, to be a finisher you had to score 3 numbered bonus locations plus the mandatory visit to Fort Indiantown Gap cemetery to visit Jim.

As mentioned all the bonus points were sub 5 points, with the exception of 6.

Flight 93, Battery Park (Manhattan, NY) and Arlington Cemetary, DC were worth 11 points each.   There was a bonus of 467 points if you got all 3 (for a total of 500).   So that pretty much made these mandatory.

Then there was Indianapolis for 100 points,  Randleman, NC for 42 points and some crazy location in Wyoming for 751 points.  (The Sucker Bonus).

So after review:

It was clear to score well you’d have to get the big 3.  If you wanted a shot at winning you’d also have to get Indy and possibly Randleman.

To complicate things, NY, DC, and Indy were daylight only bonuses.  You had to get them between 5:30am and 8:30pm.   Pretty crappy, since you only had from 5:30am to 2pm on Sunday.

There was one other wild card, at the rally hotel in Haggerstown, there was a bonus location available from 5pm-8pm Saturday.  Some skill challenges where you could score between –30 and 30 points.  The races/skill test was undefined, and since this is the Mason Dixon rally we had no ideal what type of shenanigans Rick would pull. 30 points would be a LOT in this rally, but with the chance to also lose, we decided we’d pass on those.

I won’t bore you with the 72 iterations that I went through to figure out where we’d go.  If you just got the big 3 you were in a for a nice 800ish mile ride.

But we weren’t in this for a nice ride, we wanted to score well for a change.  It was clear to me we needed Indy.  On Memorial weekend, yeah, race weekend, thanks Rick.

In the end we settled on this route:

From the barn, straight to flight 93, then beat feet to Indy.  Getting there around 1-2pm.  I did my homework, there was a parade at noon, and generally speaking the area around the bonus would be off-limits.  (Streets closed) but I figured that’d be cleared up by the time we got there.   There was no way I was going to try and go there on Race day, but some folks did at 5:30, about the only time you could *maybe* get it.

From Indy we’d pick up the low hanging fruit along I-70 that was close on our ride back to the hotel for our rest bonus.

We planned to sleep for 4 hours (1 more than the 3 hour minimum rest).  Then get up and run down to Arlington and be there at 5:30am, snap the picture of the memorial and get out of dodge before Rolling Blunder, with special guest Sarah Palin who would be in town (again, thanks Rick)

From Arlington, beat feet to Manhattan, get there around 9:30am, hopefully before to many tourists would hit Ground Zero.

Then to Jim’s grave, again picking up low hanging fruit on the way back to the barn.  That was the plan.  1620 or so miles in total.

And so it began.

With a LeMans start.  Rally riders 50 yards from their bikes with the helmets between us and our bikes.  (nice touch Rick).

Unlike 2010 we got started on time.

And we beat feat to Flight 93

From there it was a long ride to Indy.  We didn’t stop for anything other than fuel.

We made it to Indy, we had budgeted 1.5 hours to get this bonus.   We rolled right in like we owned the place.

Now technically this is NOT the item we were supposed to take a photo of.  But it met the definition.  “Take a photo of the 100 Year Anniversary Logo on the Museum” or something like that.  Hard to see in the photo but that white sign says “Museum Entrance”.   We were also parked right next to a vendor and bought our ‘wild-card checkered flag bonus’.   3 additional points were available if you crossed the finish line displaying a checkered flag.  At the pre-dinner, desert was cup-cakes that had little checkered flags in them.  I knew we needed that damn flag, but neither Kyle or myself had cupcakes and neither of us grabbed one.

From Indy we actually ran out west of Indy go John Force’s place to take a photo of Eric Medlen’s statue, a driver killed during a test run of one the Force Chassis.

We headed back to Haggerstown.  I –70 would be just as exciting the 2nd time around (not).

On the way back we grabbed the bonus at the John and Annie Glen Historic site:

From there some dilapidated old dirt track.

We got Holeshot motorsports in MD

Did I mention yet that riding the slab for 30 hours sucks?  Yeah, all interstate, who’s Idea was this?

At some airport that had been used for a makeshift race track a few times we were supposed to get a photo of ourselves on some playground equipment, but that playground no longer existed.  We called the Rallymaster and were instructed to get a photo of ourselves at the terminal so we did.

From there it was back to the hotel for the rest bonus.  Which is best documented by using an ATM receipt.  We each got them, then the ATM ate Kyle’s card.  Doh!

The idea given to me by the Void rally master when I had an issue getting a good ending receipt from the hotel last fall.  He said go to an ATM check your balance and use that for the start and ending receipts.  So that was the plan.

We discussed what we’d do to get him a stop receipt.  If you’re staying at the Ironbutt Hotel (sleeping on your bike or on the ground you’ll often just go to a gas station and buy something.   We did this the year prior.  Used a gas receipt, then slept on the ground for 3 hours and bought a cup of coffee from the same joint in the morning.

We decided that I’d just pull two receipts.   What was important was that the receipt came from the same location, same machine, not who’s card was used.  We reasoned that if I had paid for his coffee the year prior, it wouldn’t have mattered, so using my card wouldn’t matter.

We slept for 3.5 glorious hours.

We left a little early to get into DC with the least amount of fuss.

While we had budgeted an hour and a half to get the Indy bonus, it only took us about 20 minutes.  However that extra time we booked vanished over the next few hours.   We were concerned that we wouldn’t close the loop in time.  We had 600 miles to do and figured we’d probable loose ~30 minutes over that time.  Which meant we’d get the big ones and drop all the extras.

We ran to Arlington and go there about 5:15 and had to wait for 5:30 to roll around to take the photo.

We had to take a photo of the memorial and have the Washington memorial visible in the background.  (note there isn’t a time/datestamp on this photo because I switched to ‘night’ mode to get the monument to show up.

Then we ran straight to NY, dropping two bonuses along the way.

The trip inbound was pretty uneventful for NY.  We rolled up the the target, hopped off our bikes, and snapped the picture.  Kyle got some random tourist to hold his flag.

The target was the globe in the background.   The guys directing the bus traffic weren’t real happy with us but we were in and out in less than a minute.

From NY it was all down hill.   We had one more mandatory stop at Jim’s grave.

We blew off a couple other bonuses and just headed to the barn.

Would-should-coulda…

In the end we clocked in with 1640 miles (or there abouts, I don’t know what the final corrected value was).   783.28 points with all wildcard and check in bonuses.  A good ride.

(IF) we’d a picked up just one or maybe two of the other planned bonuses of which we probably had time to get since we were back 15 minutes before penalty time, we coulda maybe won.  But then again, (IF) my aunt had balls she’d be my Uncle.

Good enough for 4th and 5th.

I’m happy with this finish all things considered.  We planned our ride and rode our plan.  We rode safely, and slept well.  Or at least well enough.

But the story doesn’t end there.  After scoring I went out to put the cover on my bike and was greeted with this:

Ouch, with 500 miles to ride to get home, that wasn’t going to work.   At the banquet I asked about tires and tried to find a solution.  Most motorcycle shops aren’t opened on Monday’s let alone memorial day Monday.   It was looking like I’d have to spend an extra night and buy a tire on Tuesday.

Then Ron Moser came to my rescue, he was quite sure he had a ‘take off tire’ that would get me home.  His place was on the way.  150 miles on the way but on the way no-less.  He also had tire changing equipment.   Now I just had to get there.   150 miles was doable with the aid of… wait for it …

Gorilla tape.

Stop laughing now.

It actually worked out fairly well.  We taped it up, rode 10 miles checked it, it was good.  We stopped about every 20 miles, checked it, re-taped if necessary and eventually got to Ron’s

Things learned: this works.

It works best when you keep the speed down, like under 60, more like 50-55.   Yeah it was hard being passed by trucks, and Harley’s for 150 miles.  But I swallowed my pride in the name of safety and we made it.   150 miles is pretty much the max though.  That tire was way beyond done by the time we got to Ron’s place.

But with my newly mounted new to me Pilot Road, I was good to go.

For what it’s worth, the tire was a Pirelli Angel.  It had 5500 miles on it prior to the rally and looked really goo, good enough for me to take to a rally and expect to be able to put 2500 miles on.  I really though it had another 2500 in it or I would not have ridden the rally with it.   While these tires were ‘good’ they weren’t great, and obviously give up rather quickly toward the end, which isn’t good for me.

At the end of the weekend I piled 2599.2 miles on the FJR, now affectionately named ‘Trigger’.   I need personalized plates.

The end…

If you don’t know what a rally is, see my MD 2020 Rally report, I explained it there.

The Void is unique in that it’s really 5 different rallies at the same time.

(4) 24 hour rallies, all starting from different locations, but ending at the same place.  And a 10 hour rally starting from the rally headquarters in Lynchburg, VA.

My group started from Lexington, KY.   All four starting locations were given their rally books on Tuesday the 5th, with the Rally scheduled to start at 11 am on Friday at their respective locations.   That gave us 3 days to look at the locations, the points and try to come up with a route.

The rally window was 26 hours, minus a 3 hour minimum rest, meant we had roughly 23 hours to work with.

23 hours at a 52mph average would mean a decent route would be approximately 1200 miles.

The bonus list was provided and when mapped out it looked like this:

This was a photo rally, which meant to prove you obtained a bonus you’d have to visit it and take a photo of the required item with your rally flag.   In the above image, the ‘big rocks’ were hurricanes worth 500 points, with each hurricane was 4 other bonuses that went with them.  You could earn a sequence bonus if you got them in order 1-4 plus the related 500.

Upon examination, I didn’t think that was worth while.  Each sequence involved some back tracking.

There were a few other bonuses that had tight windows.  One that was only available 1 hour before the rally ended, and according to most mapping software it would take you 59 minutes to get from it to the finish.  Given that you were losing points for each minute you were late, any traffic jams or any delays and you’d be in penalty land.

In all of my previous rallies I’ve ridden with someone else, either Kyle or Kyle and my dad.   Riding with more than one person slows you down some.  Not a lot in our case as we’ve probably all logged over 30k miles riding together so we know what to expect from the other person(s).

My dad decided he wanted to run a more conservative route, about 900 miles.   Being a competitive person, I wanted to score well.   I’m simply not in the league as the top guys.  They ride many rally’s per year and have been doing it a long, long time.   But I believe I can compete at the ‘B’ level.  So I created a route based upon what I thought I could do and hopefully score well enough to be in the top 5.

My route tried to hit the basic rule:  Get the big rocks and use big roads to do it.  That mean a lot of highway time.   It’s hard to make time on two-lane twisty roads.  While that’s the type of road I most enjoy riding, it’s not a good choice for rallying.   Especially at night.

My route had me starting in Lexington, running over to West Virginia, down past Charlotte, then up towards Washington DC, then back to the Rally HQ in Lynchburg.   There was quite a bit of out-and-back, but those runs were all for big points (500 point bonuses) so I felt it was worth it.    I had discovered a route that would allow me to get four of the 500’s and two 200 point bonuses for a total of 2400, which would have been a top score with the rest bonus and gift bonus.  But that route had absolutely no room for error.  It was definitely go-big or go-home.  If something bad were to happen, if you got behind by as much as 30 minutes you were doomed.  There was no saving it.   Often it’s a route like that that wins but I elected not to run it, maybe I should have, it was only 50 miles longer than my chosen route.

At the start we had a window of 20 minutes to get a starting location receipt, and call into the rally master.  A receipt from Lexington with a time stamp between 10:50 and 11:10am on Friday.   If you started at 11:05 your finish time (penalty time) started at 1:05pm on Saturday.

IF you wanted to take a crack at that tight 200 point bonus it was in your best interest to start as late as possible like 11:09, to buy yourself 9 extra minutes to get from it to the finish before you started incurring penalties.   I wrote this bonus off, it didn’t fit into my route.

I started at 10:59 which meant I had until 12:59 to check into the finish.

My first stop was the “Vortex Loop” street sign.  I got there ahead of schedule.

From there I ran to General Jenkins historical marker.

At this point I was making good time and could see I was running ahead of schedule.  The biggest factor for this was that I *think* Streets and Trips thought a number of the highways were 55 MPH roads which were now 70 MPH roads.  Running at roughly 5 over, meant I was picking up almost 20 miles an hour.  The General Jenkins bonus was 200 miles into my route, so I had picked up almost 30 minutes by then.   Things were looking up and I was excited.

3rd stop was to get a photo of the wooden sign in front of the Hurricane Fire Department, in Hurricane, WV.  As rallies go, you have to get a photo of exactly what the book says.  The sign in question was covered by the ‘Change your Clock/Battery sign’ and that wasn’t a good thing.   If they had taken this sign down during the day and another rider returned with a photo of the actual sign, I would be hosed.  No points for you!.   So I call the rally master, made him aware.  Actually he was already aware, he instructed me to make sure he could recognize the fire department.  I took quite a few alternate photos just in case.

Then off to Tornado, WV

To get a photo of the post office and volunteer fire department there:

These two bonuses were literally 15 yards apart.  A lot of folks missed this because in the mapping programs they were so close, they looked like (1) location.

50 points each!

My next bonus was about 100 miles away, on good twisty roads to get near Fayetteville, WV.   Actually at the BOTTOM of the New River Gorge Bridge.  At this point, or at least on my way to this, I was 45 minutes ahead.   This was good because my next bonus was on the list, but according to the plan I would be 20 minutes late.  It was only available 8am to 8pm.  But I was going good, until…  I got to Fayetteville.   So on the east side of the gorge, there are two roads that run down to this point.  At one time they were two way, now it’s a one way loop.  But Garmin didn’t know that and tried to run me down the wrong way on a one way road.  It took me a good 15 minutes to get that sorted out and to get down there.   Photo take at: 4:59pm  My scheduled time was 5:27pm so I was still 30 minutes ahead.

As I came out of the gorge and tried to go south on 19, it was backed up, bumper to bumper as far as I could see. @%$#%@ so I mashed the detour button on the GPS, and started following it.  Through Fayetteville, all back streets, all 25 mph, not the 55 mph I was counting on.  I was losing minutes and fast.

I finally escaped, and got back out on 19 past the backup, which I think was construction I don’t really know.

My next stop was either the Stone mountain state park 170 miles away if I could get there by 8pm or all the way down past Charlotte, NC, in Chester, SC.

I was doing my best to get there, but I didn’t have time to stop for anything other than fuel.  For 3 more hours I sat there, and twisted that.

The Stone mountain bonus was almost 20 miles off the interstate, twisty roads, and it was going to be in the dark.   When I departed from the Ferry bonus, my ETA to Stone mountain was 8:04pm.   I had to make up 4 minutes, but with given 150 of the miles were interstate and I had the benefit of Garmin thinking at least part of it was 55 and not 70 I thought I’d be OK.   I’d make the call when I got to the exit.  The sun pretty much dropped out of the sky around 7pm, and so did the temperature.  It was 48 ish degrees, and I wasn’t dressed for this.  I still had my mesh jacket and summer gloves on.  For what ever reason, my heated grips weren’t heating and I was freezing my arse off.  But I didn’t have time to stop and put better gear on.  I figured I could man-up and tough it out for the last 60 miles.

At the exit, my eta was now 7:50 so I thought I’d give it a shot.   As I pulled up to the gate the ranger was sitting there waiting to close it at 8pm sharp.   They don’t mess around.  He flashed his lights, and I rolled up to the ranger’s truck.   He asked if I was camping tonight, cause if so, I needed to head back he was closing the gate.   I explained I was on this scavenger hunt thing, and needed a photo of a stone mountain park sign.  He pointed to a metal sign that said Stone mountain and the hours.   I pulled over, read the instructions which specifically stated the the sign was the map of the park with the ‘You are here’ sign at the visitors center.

I showed the ranger the rally book, and said, they are pretty specific, it needs to be ‘THIS’ sign, and I have to snap the photo by 8pm.  He looked at his watch and said, well, it’s about a 1/4 mile down, the road is not lit but there should be a light at the Visitor’s center.  Go get your photo, you have 6 minutes.  I’m locking the gate at 8:06, if you aren’t back you’re spending the night.  (he said with a big grin).

I ran down to the Visitor’s Center, had no trouble finding it.  Jumped off the bike, grabbed the rally pack (with flag) and took the photo.

At Exactly 8:00pm

I got out of the park, he closed the gate behind me and I quickly pulled over in a parking area and started digging for my heated liner.

I slammed a protein drink, some blueberry and dirt flavored concoction.  It was horrible!  I washed it down with a bottle of water and hopped back on the bike.   The next bonus was in South Carolina, a little over 100 miles away.  That’s roughly 100 minutes to get there, and I’d need to stop once for gas.

My plan was to ride back up near Stone mountain and find a hotel for my required rest bonus.  So I was looking at another 3-4 hours in the cold before I could get some rest and warm up.  It was gonna suck.

I beat feet for NC, at the exit I noticed there was a boat load of hotels, and even a Motel 6 advertising $39 rooms.  This was perfect.  I only needed the room for 3 hours so the cheaper the better.

I picked up the Cyclone restaurant bonus, which was another good 500 point bonus at 10:42 pm.

My original plan was to run back up north, half way to the next bonus, then sleep for 3 hours.  The rest bonus couldn’t be started until after 10 pm.  It was after 10 pm and I was freezing, even with a heated liner.  I still had mesh pants on and needed to put on my Long-John LD Comforts or something.  So I figured I’d grab some sleep here, then head north after the nap.  I was still 20 minutes ahead.  So sleeping now made sense.  I rolled back to the highway, stopped in at the Motel 6, grabbed a room, checked in at 11:04.  The minimum rest bonus requirement was 3 hours.  I asked for a 1:45am wake up call.

I got in my room, got out of my riding gear, laid out some warmer stuff for the morning, sent a text to my wife that I was still alive, and updated a buddy (Kyle), then set the alarm on my phone for 1:47.

As soon as I nodded off, my phone went off.  First my wife, thanking me for updating her.  Then 5 minutes later, Kyle asking more questions.  I didn’t have time for this, so I tried to go back to sleep.  Which as tired as I was is difficult.

You are still amped up, on adrenaline from riding and the time pressures.  You’re constantly thinking; “What can I do better tomorrow?”, “Are there any other bonuses I can add?”, “If I need to bail tomorrow where is my point of no return?”.  I resisted the urge to open up the laptop and look for more points.  I was still 20 minutes ahead and considered that a blessing.  A blessing which wasn’t going to last long…

I awoke with a start at 2:20 am…  What the?  The hotel didn’t call me or if they did I didn’t hear it.  I grabbed my phone.  Oh…  I set the alarm for 1:47pm, no wonder.    I scrambled to get dressed and back out on the bike.   I got my receipt as another rider was checking in.   Thinking about it now I should have just given him my room key.  I only slept on one of the two beds.

By the time I got on the road, I was now 20 minutes behind, not the 20 minutes ahead when I went to bed.  I was pissed.

It was dark, and cold.  Even with LD Comfort long pants on under my mesh pants it wasn’t enough, even on an FJR.  My legs were cold.

Body was good thanks to Gerbings[tm], but I had neglected to hook up my heated gloves and my heated grips were not working.

I couldn’t make ‘good’ time.  It was dark and foggy, and deer were everywhere on 77.   Then I rolled past this section on 77 marked as a ‘high wind gust area’.  It was 46 degrees, then in an instant it was 66 degrees, and the wind came.  First from the left and nearly blew me over a complete lane.  Then from the right.  For about 8 miles it was the most incredible thing I have ever experienced.  I’ve ridden through some storms, and literally, only a few miles form a tornado in Kansas, but this was incredible because it kept changing and violently.   It kept me awake, then just like that it was 46 degrees and calm.

My next bonus stop was through Floyd, VA on the south side of the Blue Ridge parkway.  It was dark and twisty.  I have some aux lighting but it’s only for visibility, they are see me lights, not help me see lights.  It doesn’t add any appreciable light to the road, and this sucked.

I then realized that not only was I 20 minutes late but I was loosing minutes fast.  I looked at my secondary GPS, it shows I was running about 35-40 mph, but, it thought the speed limit was 55.   Not good.  55 might be fine in the daylight but I didn’t have the lighting to travel at 55 at night.

The bonus was a corner marker from 1824:

It was not easy to find, at least not in the dark.  Photo taken at 06:43.  I was supposed to be there at 06:03 or even earlier.  I was bleeding time, and given the road ahead to the next couple bonuses, it wasn’t going to get better.

As it was, my planned time had me back at Rally HQ at 12:59, so I was now officially ‘worried’.   It’s not about riding fast, it’s about being efficient.  Not getting off the bike, short ‘fast’ stops.

I decided to head to the next bonus because it was on the way.   The key to my route was another 500 point bonus near D.C so I still had 500 miles to ride.  Any more slippage and I would be late and that’s a bad thing.

The next stop was in Roanoke, a bridge, I had to take a photo of the water level gauge.

I had another Garmin issue, trying to take me down the wrong way on a one way street.  I was losing time and not happy.

I found the bridge but by the time I walked to it, took the photo and got back it was 7:40, per my schedule I was supposed to be done with this bonus by 7:06.  I was still late.

The next bonus was just across town.

I had started for the next bonus that was literally only a mile or two away, but traffic was holding me up.  I started running calculations on the GPS, what if stuff.

I grabbed the photo and started thinking about the next one.  It was on the way, but slightly out of the way.

The ‘IF’ part was that ‘IF’ I was still 30 minutes late after getting the next bonus, I would then be late and start losing points.  As I got closer, I could see that the part that was off the route was going to take me too long so I aborted that bonus and beat feet for D.C.  (Strausburg to be exact).

I figured it was mostly highway, and if the route software still thought the highway was 55 MPH I’d be OK.

In Strausburg, I had to take a photo at a plantation.

This one:

Per the plan I had made up some time.  I was supposed to nail this by 10:09, I figured if I made up 20 minutes going there I could make up the last 10 coming back.  It worked out well enough that I could bag my final bonus near the finish.

I finished at 12:56, with 3 minutes to spare, and only dropped one 54 point bonus.

At the end of scoring with rest bonus and gift bonus I had 7808, which turns out was 4th, one away from a podium finish.  3rd place scored 9 more points.  2nd was like 20 points higher.   Over sleeping cost me a 2nd place finish… Grrrr…

At the end of the day I learned a valuable lesson about alarm clocks and still had fun.  1229 miles in 22.5 hours.  More of it than I wanted on twisty roads in the dark.

I should have gone for the big money route.

I still don’t know how the winner scored over 8000 points.  I hope he will share…

I’m already looking forward to the Void 06

(Posted while still exhausted so a good portion of this likely doesn’t make sense).

We’re lucky that one of the participants has access to a Cabin in North Carolina off of route 28, which in itself is a super motorcycle road.

Details of our fun last year can be found here: http://www.dishers.com/2009/07/20/man-camp-2009-recap

This year was very similar, except I didn’t take nearly as many photos.

We started out Wednesday the 7th of July, with an return date that was flexible based upon weather and activities.   We were fortunate to have Kyle’s dad as a guest this year.  Rounding out the number of men to 6.

Wednesday involved the normal commute to the destination 450 ish miles.   A little longer this year because the Dragon (Route 129) was still closed in Tennessee so we had to divert around the mountain.

That evening we all met up and made our first pilgrimage to the the grocery story for man food and frosty beverages.

Thursday morning was a great day to ride.  Chris had to stay behind and finish up some school work for his Masters.  So 5 of us took off for the good part of the Blue Ridge Parkway and a trip up to the top of Mount Mitchell.

A good day of decent twisties.   It was HOT, but up at altitude along the Blue Ridge it was nice.

(the older gents at the top of Mount Mitchell)

Friday was more the same with a run across the Cherohala Skyway, and then to the Tail of the Dragon for lunch and a couple runs down the famous Dragon.

It rained while we were at the Tail of the Dragon cafe so we weren’t as aggressive as we (or I) would have liked to be.

We rounded out the Friday ride with a stop at the Fontana damn, then back to the grocery to restock on breakfast food.

Friday night brought with it a 2-Card poker game that Kyle Sr. used to play back in the day.   I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Chris for participating and subsidizing the rest of my fuel expenses. 

Saturday was a ‘chill day’.  Chris and Joe headed for home on Saturday.  Chris had to catch a flight early Monday and Joe was working through some work issues and had to head out.   That left my father and I along with Kyle Jr. and Kyle Sr. hanging out.

We spent most of the day shooting, or accelerating lead towards used beverage cans and just basically chilling.   Both the older gentlemen took the time to watch “The Hangover” on my iPad, which is now a classic.

Evening brought some good barbeque from North Carolina and a shorter ride through some off the path mountain roads.

On Sunday we had made plans to go rafting on the mighty Natnahala river.  (Just a few class 3 rapids, nothing over the top).

We arrived at 10am for our 11am departure.  A 2 hour ride down the river with lots of fun fighting with other rafts in the 51 degree water.   It was cold, the water that is.

At the end of the trip during the largest of the rapids is where we (my father and I) had our out of raft experiences.

First Dad went, and while I was busy laughing…

about 2.3 seconds later…

I was swimming, and it was COLD.

I just assumed the rafter/swimmer position and enjoyed the rest of the ride and was picked up by another raft just before the end.

Good times.

Next year we’re looking at making the rafting a staple of the trip, possibly somewhere a little more exciting like the Upper or Lower Gully in WV.

We left on Monday.  It was raining as we were packing and cleaning the cabin.  We started out in Rain gear for the first 10 miles of our 400 mile journey.  We dropped of the trash from the cabin and loaded up on fuel.  At that point I made the executive decision to get out of the rain gear.  After all if it was only drizzling, I’d rather be a little wet then be hot and stuffy.

Of course as soon as we got into the mountains the sky opened up.   It took us 2 hours to ride 56 miles in rain that was at times “sideways”.  I didn’t get that wet when I went swimming in the river.   It took every bit of the remaining 5 hours to dry out.   In other words it sucked quite a bit.

All in all we had a great time and I can’t wait for next year.

Other Misc Photos here: http://picasaweb.google.com/mdisher/RaftingManCamp#

If you already know what a Motorcycle Endurance Rally is.  Maybe because you read my report form last year you can skip this section and go straight to the Ride report.

A motorcycle endurance rally, like the Mason Dixon 2020, is like a big scavenger hunt.  Kinda like a Cannon ball run, only it’s not a race. While each rally is different, they all have the same basic fundamentals.

In a nutshell, you’re given a list of bonus locations, some rally’s give you the list ahead of time, some not until the day of (like the Iron Butt Rally).

The Mason Dixon 2020 give the riders a list of locations about a week before the rally.  Literally just a location and it’s point value in a document.

A text file containing the GPS coordinates and a corresponding PDF that lists the values and the bonus’s general availability.   Availability is generally defined as 24 hours, daylight only, or specific times.   Daylight in this particular rally was considered 05:30 to 20:30

We riders then take that information and attempt to plot out a route.

We use tools like MapSource and Streets and Trips.  I say attempt because it’s always subject to change at the last minute based upon new information we receive at the Rally.

Going into this one we had the above mentioned items, plus the guidelines.

• Minimum Mileage to be considered a finisher: (800)
• The Mileage cap (1675)
• the hours 0530 on Saturday morning, ending at 1400 on Sunday.  (Essentially 32.5 hours), late penalty time from 1401 to 15:30 where by you are losing 10 points per minute or any fraction thereof.  If later than that you get a DNF – Time Barred.
• Rest bonus requirements, you must during the rally take 2.5 hours of contiguous time to rest, meaning you cannot move, or collect any boni during that period.  This stationary time must be documented with proper receipts.  Failure to do so will result in a DNF – No Rest.
• This was primarily a photo bonus rally, meaning you had to visit the location and to prove you were there, had to photograph your individually provided rally flag with the item to be photographed.  (note we don’t know what that is yet but we have pretty good ideas).
• The theme of this rally was Lighthouses, as gleaned by the logo:
  
  So we could assume that if there was a lighthouse near by the location that would likely be the target.
• This rally also benefits a charity, the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center.  And we as riders provide toys, gift cards, and things for the kids who are in need of their services.

Route Planning

Now, as evidenced by the last 3 rally’s and the results, I am apparently NOT a top tier route planner.  Either that or I haven’t yet been able to cross the sacrificial line of riding hard enough to get top tier points, so when it comes to rally planning my example is simply that, and example.

Essentially we take the locations and color and shape code them based upon value (size) and availability.  In this particular rally there were two set’s of boni.  A’s and B’s.   There were additional points available for getting combinations of A’s and B’s

The initial Boni List looked something like this:

(You should be able to click for a larger version).

We are starting and ending the rally at the point labeled [1], the point labeled [2] is a mandatory location that ALL riders must visit.   Last year I visited but didn’t declare the bonus and got (0) points for it.  It was worth 387 last year, and that little mistake cost me 10 places (from 39th to 28th).

As you stare at these locations the ultimate route should become obvious, but apparently it’s not obvious to us.  (By Us I mean my father and riding buddy Kyle).  While *most* rally’s are individual events, we generally ride together.  There’s nothing to be gained by doing so other than comfort and safety.  Riding together costs us time and I would venture to guess that we’ll likely never break the top 10 riding together, but that’s OK we’re in this for the fun of it.

Now, the Rally is run by a Rally Master, or more commonly called the Rally Bastard for good reason.  1/3rd of the rally is riding skill, 1/3rd is planning a good ride and riding the plan, and adjusting as necessary, the last 3rd is the mental part.  It’s reading comprehension, keeping everything straight, managing fatigue, and putting it all together.

The aptly named Rally Bastard goes out of his way to make this difficult.  Although sometimes he doesn’t have to try that hard, as even the obvious becomes confusing when in a rush and fatigued.

So after taking all of the above into consideration, we planned a route we felt would be *good*.  Not top 10 good, but good enough for us, for our riding skills, and level of comfort.  Our route looked like:

Key components of our route focused on getting from Hagerstown Maryland up to the Lake Champlain area where there were big boni.

and getting up and around into Canada to this Daylight only bonus in  Prescott.:

Our Route had us getting the Prescott Light house at 7:45pm (45 minutes prior to the close of daylight hours) and it was 787 miles into our route.  Which meant anything could happen and we could be unable to get it.  Any significant delay.  A delay at the border, anything that could eat up 45 minutes during the course of 14 hour ride and we were hosed.

Our Route if run properly would have scored us 988 points.  988 with all the combo bonuses for having 5 A’s and 5B’s would give us another 750.

Assuming we had gotten all of the other available bonus points (the rest bonus, the check in bonuses and the wild cards) we figured we’d have a total score around 1868.   I knew darn well if that was the case it would be a 2200 or higher that would win.

But our route was only 1368 miles 307  miles under the cap or (5 hours of riding roughly speaking at a 60 mph average, which can be hard to maintain).

Our route however permitted us 6 or more hours of rest, so that’s where we lost some time.   We were willing to sacrifice some points for good rest.

Trip to the Rally

I left my house at 5:45am on Friday.   The plan to meet up with Kyle and my Dad in Dayton.  We’d then sit there and twist that on over to the rally start in Hagerstown, MD

On the way we stopped at the Flight 93 Memorial.  It was a bonus location but it wasn’t on our route.

This visit was sort of special.  The First Officer of the flight, LeRoy Homer Jr. was in Kyle’s squadron.

It’s a very chilling place.

The passengers on the plane are real hero’s.  No doubt about it.  There’s no telling how many lives they saved.

It’s now a national park and a proper memorial is being built.  Go visit it if given the chance.  No just go visit it.

Rally Day – Rally Report

At the Dinner Friday night there was a brief introduction to the rally, and the general rules were covered.  Rally flags were handed out.  This year I was given rider #38.  (for no particular reason).

On rally day (if 4:20 am can be considered daytime).  We are given our rally book and any last instructions.  The rally book details each location.  For example the Prescott Light house, we were instructed to get a photo of the Prescott light house.  Little did we know that there would be (2) Light houses there, and the one you’d think to take a photo of wasn’t the one you needed to take a photo of.  If you didn’t stop, read the instructions and find the plaque on the light house you’d take a photo of the wrong one.  Then you’d get (0) points to show for your 14 hour 787 mile ride and border crossing.  (This is where the Rally Bastard stuff comes in).

In addition to the bonus points listed, there are always a couple *wild card* bonus locations.

1) Was to take photograph of a Diamond.  There was a paragraph explaining that it had to be recognizable as a Diamond.  If they couldn’t tell from the photo that it wasn’t a fake or a Cubic Zirconium you would be awarded (0) points.   The question was then asked could it be ‘any diamond, like a baseball diamond?  The answer was that sometimes the obvious answer is the right answerl  (gee that’s helpful).

2) Take a photograph of a license plate with a light house on it.  We assumed incorrectly of course, that this would be easy.  I know one of the eastern states has (or had) a license plate with a light house on it.  Since the rally hotel was basically at a large mall, we assumed we’d find one just before finishing the rally at the mall.  We assumed (and you should never assume) that it was Maryland, and since the mall was there this would be a no brainer.

When we returned we scoured the Mall parking lot, not a single license plate with a light house anywhere.  So we ended up not getting it.  Turns out the head scoring judged (former US Navy Surgeon General and Rally icon, Don Arthur’s car in the parking lot had a license plate frame with a light house on it.  We just didn’t see it.  (Rally Bastards).

3) The third and final wild card was to take a photo of a home-made road side memorial, but it could not be a cross.   Hrm…   We thought about making one, and that’s what we should have done.  But we didn’t have time.  We didn’t score this bonus either.  The proper thing to do was make your own, after all it simply had to be a memorial and home made.  It didn’t specify what you are memorializing.

Pfffft.

So after the briefing we were Off.  The rally was supposed to start at 05:30 but we didn’t roll out of the parking lot until 05:45.  (Remember that 45 minute cushion?   It’s now down to 30 minutes right out of the gate).

First stop, Jim Young’s grave.  A rally rider who died in 2001.  His grave is always a mandatory visit.  Fort Indiantown gap is a very special place.  A large military cemetery.   If you ever get the chance to visit it, I suggest you do so, especially on or around Memorial day.  It will stir emotions in you that you didn’t knew existed.  To see the number of graves from the world wars if just amazing.

Our plan had us here at 06:47 so we were only 10 minutes behind. At this point.  Which means we made up 5 minutes on the 95 mile ride to Jim’s grave.  Not too bad.  You can generally make up time on the interstate just running 5-7 miles over the limit.   I say generally.  I’ll show you why we couldn’t later.

Our next Stop was  supposed to be Bonus 108A, a larger bonus at 88 points. a mere 345 miles from Jims grave.

The problem was, well we were behind, and it had 10-12 miles of gravel road to contend with.  To fit into our plan we had to be at the exit by 11:30.  While every reasonable effort was made to make up time, we actually lost time somehow.  We decided to cross this off the list and march on or we’d blow the larger 96 point bonus in Canada.

Our 4th stop would be in Middleburry, Bonus 155A, a historical marker for John Deere.  Where very first moldboard plow was made.  No it wasn’t easy to find.  The GPS took us down behind the building and we didn’t see it initially.

Picture snapped at 13:50, we were now 8  minutes ahead of schedule, which confirmed we needed to blow off the previous bonus.

On to the next bonus a Light House, 119A.

According to our research and planning we had ‘planned’ to avoid Ferries.  A number of bonus locations required the use of a Ferry or, if not, some creative routing.

While I understood the Iron Butt Rule:  If the rally offers up a ferry, you will more than likely have to take it be a contender, we were determined not to do so.

Streets and Trips, Google Maps, MapQuest and my lovely GPS, all showed there to be a bridge at this location:

But when we arrived, and saw the sign that the bridge was closed we knew this was a Rick Miller/Rally Bastard special!   No doubt in our minds.  Fortunate there was a Ferry running right there.  Who’d a thunk it.  We thought about it for a minute and decided we needed the points.

It actually worked out really, really well.  We literally rolled right onto the ferry, crossed the lake, rode off, took the photo, rode right back on and got on the SAME ferry before it returned.   It maybe cost us 15 minutes total.

We snapped the photo at 14:32, by our schedule we should have been there at 14:21.  We were now 11 minutes behind.

Next stop 111A, a covered bridge.

Photo taken at 15:27 by our schedule we were supposed to be there at 15:13, so we were now 14 minutes behind.

Ugh…

Next stop 158A, the Fort Ste Anne Historical marker.

Photo time 16:43 schedule time 16:09, now 36 minutes behind.  Oy…

On to Bonus number 128A.

Which was a light house that was located on private property.  The task was to take a photo of the menacing sign keeping you off the property.  There was no such sign.  We took photos documenting this fact, and called the Rally Bastard to verify that we  had the right place.  We could actually see the light house, but the instructions were to photograph the sign, not the lighthouse.

Last photo taken at 17:53, schedule time was 17:11, we were now 42 minutes behind.

On to Bonus 215, the Prescott lighthouse in Canada.  Worth a whopping 96 points.  We needed this after blowing off the 88 pointer in the beginning.

Our route had a 45 minute cushion.  We needed to be there by 20:30 to take the photo.  We were not 43 minutes behind and losing time with ever stop.  Not because we were slow collecting the photos, or slacking off riding, we just were losing time.  Sometimes traffic, other times gas stops.

So we had a 2 minute cushion and 130miles to ride, with a border crossing.  We were tight on fuel, and by tight I mean, it was very close, we might have to push our bikes to the light house.  Yet we didn’t have time for that.  We also didn’t have time for a gas stop really.   Maybe a splash and go.

We actually made up 5 minutes so we had an 8 minute cushion about 20 miles away.  But both Kyle and I were running on fumes.  We had to stop and get a splash of gas.

We were very fortunate that there was no line to cross the border, no wait on the bridge and we got through customs/border protection quite easily.

We went straight to the light house, though the GPS led us to think it was a smaller light house out by the docks.  We read the description, found the plaque on the light house and snapped the photo:

Photo time 20:26, 4 minutes to spare.   We could now relax a little bit.  The first half of our route was complete and we had about 800 miles in the books.

We considered stopping to eat in Canada but man the bugs were incredible.  We ended up crossing back over into NY.   Stopped at a Combo gas station-Subway-A&W-LongJohnSilvers.   (No really, they had all that stuff).  Ate dinner, then headed to a hotel for a little shut eye.  We had to take our rest bonus between 6pm and 6am so timing wise we were fine.

Our route also allowed us more time to sleep, but by the time we got to the hotel, checked in, we had about 4 hours to rest.

We got a room with 2 beds and a pull out sofa.  I opted for the sofa.  A room split 3 ways is a deal.  $45 for 4 good hours of sleep, not in a church driveway or on a gas station picnic table was well worth it.

At 0300 we were up and off again.  Next stop 37 miles away.  Collins landing 200B

We had to take a photo of the Welcome Center sign.

In the end this wasn’t the sign they wanted, but the documentation didn’t indicate the other sign, it simply said welcome center sign buy the ‘yard art’ light house.  While not visible in the photo, it was near by in the same (yard).

Our schedule had us here at 04:06 so we were 15 minute ahead at this point.

Early on we figured out that the Wild card bonus to take a photo of a diamond, was meant for us to take a photo of a ‘diamond shaped sign’.  Clearly this is not a Cubic Zirconium or another fake diamond.   Such a sign was handy at this location.

On to 147B YAL (Yet another Lighthouse)

The task to take a photo of a particular sign, and there were a few to choose from but only one ‘right’ one.

Photo time: 04:31 schedule time: 04:37.  What happened to our 15 minute cushion?

On to 192B a marker:

On to 143B, a Daylight only YAL.

We were early but had to wait until 0530 (the start of daylight) to take the photo.

Since we had to wait, we were right back on schedule.   On to 106B the Light house bowling alley.

Photo time 06:15 schedule time 05:12, so we’re 3 minutes behind.  We also took this opportunity for a bio break, grab a cup of joe and a breakfast burrito at McDonalds.  We didn’t really have the time to spare but we did so anyway.

Next stop 221B a fort, but we had to find the marker that showed that this fort was used to house holocaust survivors in 1944-1948.

Photo time 06:40 schedule time 0614, so were about 30 minutes behind our master plan.  According to the plan we had about 1 hour to mess with to get back to Rally HQ before penalties would start.  We now had about half of that.  But only 2 more bonuses to get.

On to 114B the Eaton Post office:

Photo time 0815 schedule time 0745, still 30 minutes behind, but with still 30 minutes to spare.

On to one last bonus, that we considered blowing off as it was only 17 points.  Damn good thing we didn’t.  IF for some reason the sign had actually been at 128A and we just didn’t see it, or we were at the wrong place, then  we wouldn’t have 5 A’s and 5 B’s.  It would have cost us 400 combo points.

It was 200 miles away from the post office so we felt we could make up some time.

The road into 172A was horrible.  Full of traffic and I’m not joking when I say we caught every stinking light.

Photo time 11:55, schedule time: 11:12.   We were now dangerously close to ending up in penalty land.

We saddled up and beat feet for the Rally HQ, all the while looking for a license plate with a light house.  I had my camera in my tank bag.  If I saw one on the highway, I’d take the photo while riding if I had too, but no such luck.

We got back to the hotel with 15 minutes to spare.  I circled around that damn mall for 10 minutes looking for a license plate and finally conceded.

I stopped the rally clock with time to spare.

Checked into our room, took a shower, and organized my paperwork for scoring.   The only deduction I had was 5 points for misplacing my little ziplock baggie for my receipts and camera card.  In the end I finished up with 1769 points.  Good enough for 19th place if I recall properly.

That’s 20 positions better than last year and considering it was a conservative route, well, it worked out well.

Now why were we so pressed for time?   Well our route was plotted in Streets and trips.  S&T has multiple settings, like avoid certain roads.   It also has Driving time speeds which you can adjust.  My setup had them adjusted all the way up.

I *thought* I had it this way in the past, but actually that was a different version.  We generally run about 5-7 miles over the limit, (70-72) in a 65.  Not likely to get a ticket but if you do it won’t be too painful.   More importantly we generally run 1 MPH above the flow.  It’s always better on a bike to keep moving forward through traffic so you don’t end up just hanging out in someone’s blind spot.  At least that’s the theory.

It turns out that All the way faster is 15% faster across the board.  That means to stay on schedule we’d have to ride a 75 in a 65, and maintain that 15% above the average speed for the road (not the speed limit but the average speed).  That’s simply NOT possible on a lot of roads given memorial day traffic.   So next year we’ll have a little more flexibility in our routes.

So at the end of the weekend we rode 2325 miles.  30 hours butt in saddle.  Not a lot of sleep, but a whole lot of fun.

Lastly, I cannot stand people who sit out in the left lane who run the speed limit, or over/under it and just sit there.  Every state has a law, slower traffic keep right.   If you aren’t passing someone get your butt in the right lane.

To help people get the message I put ‘Move’ on my windshield backwards so that it would be right in the jerk’s mirror who’s sitting there in the left lane.

Did it work?  Well yea sometimes it did.  But I used yellow tape and while sitting on the bike in my yellow hi-viz jacked it kind of blended in.  Next year it will be a more contrasting color.  

Until next year!

Originally planned for Thursday->Monday in Johnson City, TN.  I was only able to attend Fri->Sun.

The weather for this event looked to be somewhat miserable but knowing the great group of folks that attend it was worth going to regardless of how crappy the weather was.

I left Friday morning alone and planned to ride a fairly twisty route down there after hitting the highway to Lexington.

It was in Lexington that the sky opened up and all hell broke loose.  I usually don’t mind riding in the rain, but 4+ hours in the rain is pretty miserable.

I’m sure the mountain parkway is nice and beautiful, but I didn’t get to see any of it.  Only water spray from the cars/trucks in front of me.

I didn’t get _that_ wet though.  My Frog Togs [TM] kept me dry.  My boots let me down, as did my Aerostitch Triple Digits, they didn’t leak as much as water ran down my arm into the Gauntlet, where they held water like a plastic bag with a gold fish in it.

I stopped around Hazzard Ky to dry off a bit and swap out gloves.  No sign that the weather was going to let up so I soldiered on.   From there down Route 23 was probably the worst rain I have ever been in and I’ve been in some frog stranglers before.  Water running across the road a few inches deep in places.   There was a brief window of sunlight and I pulled into a Wendy’s to again change gloves.  As I literally dumped water out of my glove covers, a guy was getting out of his truck.  He laughed and said.  “Well, good thing you’re headed North, cause south of here it’s horrible”…   Uhm…  I’m heading south, that’s not good.

The rains caught up with me before I could do much else so I saddled up and soldiered on.

The rain didn’t stop until just about 30 miles from my destination.  I was able to stop, grab a quick burger and ditch the rain gear.

I arrived around 5:30 pm.  Joe rode down on Thursday and had just returned from a short ride and apparently caught some of the same rain.

We BS’d with a bunch of other riders and waited for dinner to start.

As always EOM is a first class production.  Again, thanks to JWilly and the others that put this together.   We ate a delicious meal and commenced to doing what we do 2nd best.  Drink Beer/Bourbon and smoke cigars.  There was a comedy club in the hotel, and it was cheap ($5 if you could show your room key), which might explain the talent they had, or lack there of.  Still some laughs were had.

We made plans for Saturday’s ride.  Meet in the lobby at 8am, look at the weather and go where the rain wasn’t.   Sounded like a good plan.

At approx 8:45am, myself, Joe, JWilly, TriggerT, Duane (form Premier Cycle Accessories), and Sully headed north.

A quick fuel stop…

It was quite foggy when we set out.

And we were off.  Two lights after the gas station TriggerT was checking his rear view mirror to see if we would all make a light that had just turned yellow.  At the same time, JWilly decided we all wouldn’t make it so he stopped.  Trigger looked up at the last second, swerved and almost missed JWilly.  Their bags hit.  It wasn’t a good start to the day and I was beginning to second guess my choice of riding partners.  I have ridden with Sully (who’s fast, yet responsible) and Duane, also a very good rider.  I know JWilly can be fast, and of course I’ve ridden with Joe before.  Trigger was the unknown and it wasn’t looking good.

We ran out to the ‘The Snake’, for an early run.  There was going to be a Harley fest there and we needed to beat those yahoo’s.  Worked out perfectly.  We got there before the Harleys and the local law enforcement who was setting up their revenue enhancement opportunities at the Snake.

We had breakfast at racers restaurant in Shady Valley.  Wasn’t fast by any stretch but was good.

The rest of the day was pretty awesome.  We really lucked out weather wise.

Everyone rode responsibly…

We finally stopped for lunch in Burnsville.  Great little bistro.

Then attempted to beat the rain across 80 and part of the Blue Ridge.  That didn’t turn out so good.

The rains came, we dawned our gear and headed back to the barn.  But not before JWilly took us off 80 via a 12 mile down the mountain gravel road.

Sully was not pleased.

In the end a great day of riding.

Saturday evening brought the banquet.  Which included a few announcements, an expression of gratitude by Extreme Marine and his wife for the help the received from the community after their crash last year.  It was pretty significant.  Both were injured pretty badly, but both were wearing proper gear and both were in attendance this year.

Dinner was superb for a banquet style dinner.

As usual, EOM has a great collection of door prizes donated by vendors.  One vendor Clear Water Lights, donated a set of riding lights for a special charity auction to raise funds for Tyler.  She’s an FJR rider that was in a really bad accident and was run over by a truck.  She’s recuperating, but it will be a long road for her.

Other patrons donated their door prizes to the charity raffle as well which really helped out.  All in all over $2000 was raised for the Tyler fund.

The Charity raffle was to be held at 10:30pm that evening and you didn’t have to be present to win.  Which was good cause we were busy drinking.   After the raffle, Mike told me that all winners were present except for the lights.  I pulled out my tickets and read off my numbers.  He said, “By golly I think you won”.  I handed him my ticket as Joe had given me a nice $25 cigar that I was only 1/2 way through and wasn’t going to waste it.  A few minutes later he came back with my new lights.

Which was sweet!

I needed to ride back Sunday, and Joe decided to do the same.  We looked at the radar and there was a ‘whole’ in the rain that we though we’d exploit.

We dodged the rain all the way through TN/VA and KY up to I75.   No sooner had we gotten on I-75 the high way was at a stand still.  Turns out there was 4 car accident about 7 miles up the road.  No where to turn around, not way to cross over to the south bound side.   We sat in traffic for almost 2 hours.  About 30 minutes in the rains caught up with us.  It wasn’t totally horrible, but it wasn’t much fun either.

We finally got to the accident, and exited the highway, ran up 25 north where through the Detour.  We skipped our first opportunity to get back on I75 and rode up to 36 just south of Dry Ridge.  After a quick stop we were geared up to just run home.  Then Joe’s bike wouldn’t start.  2 plus hours of stop and go traffic with his PIAA’s on had depleted his battery.  Luckily, he was able to bump start it.

No sooner had we gotten on I75 and all we could see were break lights again.  Another significant accident with a truck on it’s side.  Luckily we were less than a 1/2 mile from it and it wasn’t blocking all 3 lanes.  We escaped and headed north.

Just as we got to Florence it really started raining, and it rained until we got home.   It took us almost 4 1/2 hours to go 90 miles.  Not fun.  

Good times were had and winning new lights definitely made it worth while.

Really looking forward to next year.

There are few more from Killboy.com but he doesn’t do electronic distribution.

Dad:

Me:
 

Kyle:

Joe:

We stayed in Kyle (Brad)’s Uncle’s kick-butt Cabin in the middle of the forest off of route 28 south of 74, which in and of itself maybe one of the greatest roads in the area to ride.

There were no YouTube moments, at least none that we have footage for.  Though Kyle’s buddy Chris did wreck pretty hard on his way home on Sunday.   For the record, (I) had nothing to do it with it.  He was on his own.  He is fine and will be OK.  (ATGATT = All the gear all the time).

Here’s the breakdown of the trip.

Wednesday (Day 01)

We all met up early like 6:30am early in Sharonville, to get through Cincy before morning rush hour.  We stopped at the Cracker Barrel in KY for breakfast (the first of many great meals).

This would also be the last time I’d get to use the iPhone, as where we were headed was technology challenged (No or very limited, Cell Service).

In attendance for the long haul to the cabin were; Dad, Kyle, Joe and myself.  We’d meet up with Kyle’s buddy on Thursday.

Shortly after Cracker Barrel, I was really hating my bike.   I’d done a ton of maintenance recently and felt like the steering was too tight.  Alas, this was something I didn’t have tools with me to fix.   About 6 miles down the road I checked tire pressures, and my rear was almost 15lbs too low.   I added air, and things were much, much better.   However, this tire had two plugs in it and had them since the MD2020.  I had put proper air pressure in the tire the night before so this wasn’t a good sign.   It would be in the back of my mind from this point on.

Somewhere before the GAP I checked my tires, they were down almost 2 lbs.  So I picked up another set of patches planning to re-plug the tire with thicker sticky strings that evening.

We traveled on down I-75 through Deals Gap where we tamed the Dragon and stopped for lunch.

If you’re not familiar with the Dragon, google it.  It’s route 129 in TN, and NC.  318 turns in 11 miles.

Of course we needed to visit the tree of shame:

If you crash at the Dragon (and a lot of people do), you’re supposed to leave something behind on the tree of shame.

From the dragon we continued on down to RT 28 below 74 to the awesome accommodations at ‘le Cabin’.   An A-Frame owned my Kyle’s Uncle.

The cabin is up in the mountains at approx 3000 feet, so it was 10 degrees cooler up there.  No AC, no cell coverage or internet.  No cable TV either but still a great place, including a super sweet garage to park our bikes in.

But before you could enjoy this peaceful place you first had to cheat the ‘Driveway of Death’.  Part Gravel, part pavement, probably a 20% grade for a few hundred yards.   The first attempt didn’t go so well for Joe.  We had to stop half way up to unlock the gate.  His bike was in a precarious situation and he dropped it.  No blood, no harm no foul.  By the end of this trip his fear of gravel will be conquered.

We unloaded our bikes and headed off the the grocery store (30 miles away) to get the weekends provisions.

Man food mostly:

Beer, eggs, butter, bacon, wheat bread, beer, pop, salad, and beer.

We did score 3 rotisserie chickens for dinner the first night.

So our first dinner was Chicken, salad with beer, followed by Cigars, scotch and beer.

It was a nice relaxing evening.  I patched my tire and all was well.

Thursday (Day 02)

We got up at a reasonable time and had breakfast.  Eggs and BACON.

Bacon would fuel us this weekend!

Our route today was supposed to be rather peaceful, yet exciting.  We were to run a route that would take us over Teleco mountain, over to Telico Plains, across the Skyway, etc.   About 45 minutes into the router we realized that Teleco road leads us to Otter Creak road, which was gravel, and getting worse by the mile.   We also discovered about half way up this gravel road that my tire was indeed FLAT.  One of the new plugs from the night before had come out.   We patched my tire in the hollers and headed back toward Franklin. 

(Fixing my flat down in the holler)

We had a 1pm meet time with Chris and couldn’t complete our intended route.

Along the way we passed ‘Cycle Crazy’ on route 28.   As we drove by, I thought to myself; “What are the chances that they’ll have a tire to fit my bike?”

We stopped for gas and talked it over.  We all agreed I should replace my tire if I could.  We used the power of Goog-411 to contact Cycle Crazy.  They did indeed have a tire.  So dad and I turned back while Kyle and Joe when off to meet up with Chris.

Cycle Crazy

These guys get mad props for hooking me up.  They stopped what they were doing to mount my tire.  They charged a fair price and didn’t try to ‘screw’ a traveler.   I highly recommend them and will give them what ever business I can.

I pulled my rear wheel so they wouldn’t have to clear a lift, they mounted the tire and dad and I hung out talking to these guys while we waited for the others to ride by.

We finally met up with the rest of the gang and decided to make the best of what was left of the day.

We headed out Route 28 through Franklin, up 64 through Highlands, a very cool little town.

Then to Pine mountain to take in a view.   The view was a 5 mile hike (maybe more).  Kyle and Chris hiked to the top.  Dad, Joe and I apparently made it about 1/2 way and gave up.  ‘Never trust a man who walked 300+ miles on the Appalachian trail if he tells you that something isn’t ‘that far’.  His view of ‘not that far’ is not the same as the rest of us.   A 5 mile up hill hike is one thing, a 5 mile up hill hike in riding boots and riding pants is another.

After that little escapade we did what we do best.  We went to eat.

After another 75 or so miles we headed back to the Cabin and called it a day.

It rained nearly every evening, but our days were great.  Having bikes in the garage was even better!

Friday (Day 03)

Our goal was to get up early and head to the BMW MOA rally.  (one of our prime objectives for this trip).  By now Kyle had figured out that he too needed tires in the worst way.  What better place to get them at then at the Rally?  Generally speaking they have decent prices at these things.

We stayed up far too late the night before and got a rather late start to the day.  We made it to the rally in Johnson City around noon.  A really pleasant 150 mile ride.  (we wanted to be there at 10 am but it just didn’t work out).

We did what we do second best, shop for motorcycle stuff.  After registration we hit up the vendors.   I didn’t have much on my list.  Some Rev-IT socks, maybe a new pump since my portable tire pump died.  Sadly I didn’t find any of these things.

The ONLY tire vendor at the show was Metzler.  While I like my Metzler Z6’s that came on my bike, I didn’t like the way they don’t have tread in the middle.  They look fine, then 100 miles later you have cords showing.   But Kyle needed tires, at least a rear.   Unfortunately the booth was booked until Sunday.  They couldn’t mount tires for him.

We wandered around some more, hoping to find Michelin or Bridgestone at the rally.  Sadly again, neither was there.  We bumped into the owner of Cycle Crazy and he didn’t have a tire in a size to fit Kyle’s bike but gladly agreed to mount it for us on Sunday if we found a tire at the rally.  So we headed back to the Metzler booth.

I’m going to blast Metzler in another specific post.  But the bottom line is they wouldn’t sell us just a tire or even a set of tires if they couldn’t mount it at the show.  Not a good thing.

So we called around using the power of 1-800-Goog-411 and found a set of tires at Wheelers, at the south end of Deals Gap.  We’d head there first thing in the morning and get Kyle hooked up.

I didn’t have my camera at the rally so there aren’t any pictures of that day.

After much shopping in the vendor area, we headed to the beer garden for a couple frosty beverages and a little relaxation before heading back.

The ride back was fairly uneventful.  We did stop and have a nice home cooked meal at a little hole in the wall diner in the middle of no-where TN.

Back at the Cabin for another late night of Scotch/Bourbon, Beer, Cigars, and stories.   Oh, and we watched probably the worst Motorcycle movie ever.  Hell Ride a Tarantino flick.  Think Pulp Fiction on Motorcycles only not that good.  It was really stupid.  IMDB is extremely generous giving it 5.3 stars out of 10.

Saturday (Day 04)

Again, we didn’t get up an out on the road as early as we would have liked.   Normally when you go on these types of trips it’s kickstands up at 7:30a or 8:00a and you ride all day.   We were a little slow moving because we were staying up so late.

First stop of the day…  Wheelers at the tail of the Dragon so Kyle could get some new shoes…

Wheelers is a one man show.  We were there when he opened though so we were first in line.  This turned out to be a good thing.  He was diligent, but somewhat slow, mostly driven by the other riders that wouldn’t leave him alone to do his work.

This is where we met Larry or Barry.  A guy on a K1200 sport bike who needed to have his tire patched.   What a tool, for 60 minutes he didn’t shut up.  It was very clear to us why he was riding alone.  I don’t think anyone could stand to be with him for more than 60 minutes.  I know we couldn’t.

After the tires we ran up to the peak of the Cherohala Skyway.  About 1/3rd of the way.   Chris had a term paper due for his online-MBA so he stayed at the Cabin to get that done.  We’d ride for a bit then meet up with him so he could upload his paper.

The weather was perfect.  On the way up we came across a rider that had gone down.  Hitting some grass on the road left over from the crews mowing the sides of the Skyway.  He was OK, but bike was broken pretty badly. 

There were quite a few police on the Skyway running radar, but it was still a fun ride.

We met up with Chris at McDonalds in Bryson City.  We enjoyed a Mc Mocha the best we could while he uploaded his paper.  Still the worst $3.00 coffee on the planet but it was there and had caffeine).

We then set off for the good end of the Blue Ridge Parkway.

It was a beautiful day.  A tad chilly at altitude but a great day none-the-less.

I had intended to take us up to the top of Mount Mitchell but with the late start (2pm) there was no way we would make it.   We cut the ride short and headed into Cruso for fuel, then back down  276 to the looking glass waterfall.  Which was a Zoo on a Saturday.

Then into Brevard for a somewhat suspect Steak Dinner.  Our first and only of the trip.  I had ribs and pulled pork.  It was good but not special.  Chris’s steak looked really bad and I was glad I didn’t go with steak.  They did however give us a bag of peanuts for the road.   Moral of the story is never trust a steak place that advertises a $7.00 steak.

Up parkway road back to the Blue Ridge with an opportunity to watch a sunset.

After our meal we beat feet for the cabin, made a quick beer stop to restock and headed home for another night of laughing.

I think we heard the Big Earl story that night.

Sunday (Day 05)

Sunday would be Chris’s last day with us.  He packed up his stuff, we’d ride till lunch and he’d head on home to Atlanta.  We were told by Kyle’s Uncle that we could get a good burger at a place on lake Aquone.  Which was perfect because Wayah road was on our do-not miss list.  We stopped at the burger joint, Lakes End Grill.   It was good, with very bad service (slow) and ugly waitresses to boot (a contradiction to the description that was given prior).

After lunch we said our goodbye’s with Chris.  He headed south, we headed north (probably a mistake to split up then).

We weren’t sure which way to head, so we looked at what routes we hadn’t run yet and decided to run to Telico and run the length of the Cherohala this time from the TN side.  We traveled down 129 to the John Brown Highway.  Calling it a highway is a stretch.   We followed it around lake Hiwassee and took a gravel road for about 4 miles to get to 68 then up to Telico across the Cherohala and back home.

Our trip was uneventful.  Just a nice peaceful ride.   We were already somewhat exhausted from all the previous activities.  We were thinking Pizza but couldn’t find a place on the way so we stopped at Subway.  Clearly the healthier choice.

Later that evening we learned that Chris had crashed about 5 minutes after he left us.   He wanted to be home by 3pm and was on schedule until that meal at the Lakes end took forever.  I’m sure he was rushing to get home, blue a corner and over into a ravine.  He was fine because he had all the gear on.  His bike was able to be ridden home.  I haven’t seen photos yet.  We should have ridden with him till he got to a straighter road.

To bed early on Sunday since Monday was ride home day.  We needed to get up early and clean the cabin.  Leave it like you found it or better.

Monday (Day 06)

Up and at-em around 8am.  The plan was to be out by 8am, which didn’t happen but we weren’t far behind.  I was sleeping with ear plugs cause everyone of us can snore like a chainsaw.  Apparently that made me harder to wake up.

We swept through the cabin, hung the towels, put fresh sheets one the beds, vacuumed, swept out the garage and what not. 

One last ride through the dragon.

Then headed straight for home.  We didn’t waste much time.   We had to stop and buy some DOT 4 brake fluid as it appeared I was leaking but that turned out not to be accurate.  Just super-slabbed it all the way home.   One stop in Jellico for Gas and Arby’s, then another fuel stop just south of Lexington to top off so we can make it home from there in one shot.

More photos and maybe even movies coming as I get them.

High res full photos here:  http://picasaweb.google.com/mdisher/2009ManCampRidinInTheSmokies#

Most of this is routine maintenance and not warranty work.  Since this is a ‘farkled’ ld bike, I prefer to do as much of the work myself.  No sense in having someone worry about my GPS/Radar Detector/XM Radio and other add-on items.   Plus I get to know the work was done to my satisfaction.

On the agenda is:

…Done… .

Final Drive Swap

…Done…   My final drive started weeping again.  I have all the seals but even better I have a low mileage (2700 miles) rear end that I nabbed of eBay a while back.  I’ve done the swap, lubed up the spines and will replace the seals in my original unit. .

Head Bearing Upgrade/Replace with Tapered Set

…Done… Special thanks to ‘Just Roy’ a forum member who makes an awesome head set socket and member ‘AllIn’ who loaned me the tools to remove the races and press in the new ones.

Ignition Switch Recall Work

…Done…  . A local dealer was willing to provide the parts so I could do it myself.  Work performed in this service bulletin.  It’s a complete crock that Yamaha only gives these guys an hour service time.   It took me a good hour and a half and I already had the bike halfway apart. .

Fork Service

Oil on order, currently just a flush and refill with new fork oil but I’m jonesing for a suspension upgrade. . … Done … Using Maxima 5wt Fork Oil. .

Valve Clearance Check/Adjust

I have a shim kit in stock and will do this in the next week or two.  This is the biggest item on the list and will take a good day for me to complete with coolant flush at the same time.  I should probably do plugs too but I did my initial set a little late and they looked great. . … Done … The 32K clearance check on my ’06 were: #1 LI = 0.008, RI = 0.007, LE = 0.009, RE = 0.008 #2 LI = 0.006, RI = 0.006, LE = 0.009, RE = 0.008 #3 LI = 0.006, RI = 0.007, LE = 0.009. RE = 0.009 #4 LI = 0.007, RI = 0.007, LE = 0.009. RE = 0.009 All in spec though a couple of the intake valves were leaning towards the tighter side.   Proving once again that having the shims on hand means you won’t need to use them! From FJR 33000 Mile mainteance .

Remove PAIR System and install the fancy block off plates.

Almost done, stripped a bolt removing one of the PAIR connectors. . … Done …

HID Headlight upgrade.

I have the kit and with the front all apart I might as well do this too. … Not sure I can use the kit that I have.  It’s really an auto-kit an the wires are simply too long for me to hide. .

Swap out BlueSeas fuse block for a smaller more compact and integrated unit.  (The FuzeBlock)

Have parts in stock, ready to do. .

Install Aux Plugs for heated gear

Installed, needs to be wired. .

Some photos of my work in progress:

Entire Album is here: http://picasaweb.google.com/mdisher/FJR33000MileMainteance#

Will update this post as things progress.