Butt Light IX Recap - Day -1 Getting Down to Business

Saturday seemed to stretch on forever as the mandatory riders meeting was not scheduled until late in the day.  Basic rally rules were reinforced.  Checkpoint procedures were delivered.  Specific rally nuances were discussed such as the carrot of receiving your Leg 2 rally pack 2 hours early if you arrived at the Checkpoint before midnight Tuesday. After an intense hour of discussing what the terms Daylight, Dark, Dusk, Civilian Twilight, etc., the group retired to the Griffen Gate Plantation Mansion for a group photo.

Credit: Rick Corwine

At 5pm, the group met for an hour of open bar and visiting before dinner was served at 6pm.  It was another anxious hour waiting for the main event, the distribution of the Leg 1 rally packs.

Credit: Steve Gallant

Right at 7:00pm, the Rallymasters called the meeting to order, said a few last minute words (thankfully no last minute surprises), and directed participants to the appropriate corners of the room to receive their rally pack.  Under strict orders to not open them yet, we had to wait for all the packs to be delivered.  We were given the ok and the sound of envelopes ripping was heard around the room.  We were instructed that all the contents of the envelope AND the envelop itself would be required to be turned in at the Leg 1 Checkpoint.  In the envelop I found my rally flag (Number 7), the printed Rally Bonus Listing, a score sheet, and most importantly a thumb drive with the electronic files that included all of the bonus listings, their coordinates, and availability instructions.

Once released, a stampede ensued to reach the elevators to our rooms.  Several hours of planning faced each of us.  It was going to be a while before I was to get any sleep. Here's where my learning opportunities (mistakes) began.  Being a long time Mac user, I'm used to using tab-delimited text files for importing information into Excel.  Those coming from the PC world are more accustomed to comma delimited (CSV) files.  First thing I do is open the bonus listing text file and paste it into Excel.  I notice right away that the availability column is not there.

LESSON LEARNED: Open and look at all files in the rally pack before anything else!!

Leg 1 TXT file

Not this time. Fat Boy incorrectly assumes that both the TXT file and the CSV file have the same contents.  One piece of critical information missing is the Availability data.  This information defines when the bonus location may be captured.  Generally they fall into 3 categories: 1) those available 24 hours a day, 2) those available during Daylight only (hence the extended discussion on definitions of time associated words), and 3) those that have some sort of specific time restrictions or days that the bonus is "open".

Leg 1 CSV file

Had I looked into the CSV version of the file I would have seen the additional info including the Availability data.

So for the next 45 valuable minutes, Fat Boy wastes by having to go line by line and entering in the availability codes from the rally book.

Only now can I start my process to plan my route.

Route planning involves an orchestrated movement of files in and out of various programs with the end result of a route or set of routes that will work within the parameters of the rally.  Text becomes Excel spreadsheets. Spreadsheets become GPX files (graphics interchage format in xml), Application text become spreadsheets again.

At the end of several hours of work, a plan is born.  Leg 1 includes a combination bonus near and dear to my heart.  If you visit and document 9 of the 14 Southeast Conference Football Stadiums, you can score an additional 2500 points.  The stadiums alone are very low points, but the lure of the combo bonus is substantial.  With that in mind, my route has me heading out of Lexington after bagging the University of Kentucky stadium (along with 80 other bikes in the parking lot) and moving southwest through Tennessee into southwest Arkansas to collect some big point time restricted bonuses. I would then work my way back NW through Hot Springs and Fayetteville where I planned to take a short 3-4 rest. On Day 2 I would head back east collecting some daylight only bonues before making the most of my stadium runs through Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia.  I would take an 8 hour rest bonus (big points) in Georgia and then focus on scrambling around the checkpoint area in Maggie Valley, NC on Day 3 making sure I arrived before midnight.

After transferring the route plans to my 2 GPS units I ran into a problem.  In addition to the 2 Garmin GPS units, I also load my plan into my iPad Mini that runs the gps app CoPilot GPS.  This app is helpful as I can quickly and easily zoom in and out to see the area around a route or bonus.  For some reason, the information would not load into CoPilot.  I finally gave up as I needed sleep desperately.  This would come back to haunt me dearly during the rally. Just after midnight I turned off the light for an anxiety filled fitful sleep.