Butt Lite IX Recap - Day 4 - In My Head

There's no harsher critic of me than me.  The tapes never stop.  My rally was over at this point.  I was faced with two choices: 1) ride a simple route for the next 3 days and collect my finisher status, or 2) challenge myself and go for the best route that I could.  69th place was a long way down to start from.  Ah hell, the hyper-competitive spirit in me said to take option 2.  So up at 5:35 I head downstairs to get some breakfast and my rally pack for Leg 2.  For those of us that checked-in prior to midnight last night were to get a prize of 2 full hours of off the clock planning for Leg 2.  This is unusual and a real gift.  A LOT of the riders took advantage of this prize.

Promptly at 6am, the Rally Staff begin to hand out the numbered rally packs.  As in the first leg, everything including the envelope is required to be turned in at the finish back in Lexington, KY 3 days from now.  Now the hustle back to the room to start the planning process.  Fortunately, the rally had occupied the entire hotel so the stampede down the halls was not affecting regular travelers.

Once in my room I transferring the necessary files to my iCloud drive and first imported the raw GPX into Basecamp to get an overview of where we would be heading.  As expected, we would be mostly in the NorthEast and MidWest.  Unknowingly repeating my mistake from the first leg, I open the TXT file and proceed to work through the rally book to add the availability codes to the boneses.  Another 45 minutes wasted.  Once I had on the bonuses coded, I reloaded them into Basecamp to see what options were available.  Obviously, the big points were going up into New England but there was this arc of big money points across northern Minnesota and the UP of Michigan.  Since I wasn't going to have a competitive finish anyway, it was an easy choice for me to go the western route and avoid all the headaches of the northeast.

It turned out this route was very similar to fellow Trophy rider, Rick Armour, but in the opposite direction.  Whereas he went due north up through Michigan and circled back in a counter-clockwise pattern, my plan was to head west then north and move in a clockwise pattern.  Day 4 was going to be weak on points but Days 5 and 6 were loaded with big bonuses.  I was looking at 3,135 miles and a bounty of 15,398 points.

My planning was interrupted for a mandatory riders meeting at 8:00 where we were advised once again to not just follow the magenta line.  Apparently, a LOT of riders were experiencing less than perfect road conditions by not paying attention to where they were. After the short meeting was over we were free to leave the hotel and start Leg 2.  I still had not finish my prep so back upstairs I went.

With my route set and the Garmins loaded, I again had trouble loading my bonus locations into CoPilot on my iPad.  This was a real pain point and caused me a lot of grief.  However, I couldn't waste any more time on it so it was time to dress, pack and go.


I don't really recall but I believe that I left the checkpoint hotel about 9:45 am, a bit later than I intended.  I was not feeling 100% recharged and the day's heat was already setting in.  I slipped through Knoxville with no problem and exited a few dozen miles later to claim the UTO bonus. Oh, and notice that I corrected the date on my camera.

This is where the difference in a 32/36 hour rally and a multiday rally shows itself, my next bonus was 276 miles and would be the first of 2 such long stretches planned this day.  Slogging down the Interstate lets the mind wander to things that it doesn't need to, like trying to figure out where my Leg 1 bonus photos had disappeared to. What action did I do that led to that happening? I was very losing my focus so I called Karen hoping to take my mind off the Leg 1 disappointment.  We were discussing my route and I told her that I would be heading up through Illinois, Missouri, Iowa and Minnesota today.  She asked if I knew that there were heat advisories in that area for today. About that same time an alert popped up on my Garmin Dezl about the heat advisory.  And it would pop up again every 20 minutes to remind me of what I already knew, it was f'n hot today.

Now late in the afternoon I finally approached my 2nd bonus, CIR, which is a ferry crossing of the Ohio River between Kentucky and Cave In Rocks, Illinois.  Fortunately,  I didn't have to wait long as the ferry arrived on my side in short order.  To capture this bonus you were required to take a photo of your motorcycle on the ferry, with you flag displayed, in the middle of the river during the crossing.  Of course with the moving ferry, the flag was not wanting to cooperate.

It was kinda cute how the little pilot house would rotate 180 degrees once the barge pulled away from the shoreline.  After crossing I stopped to document the bonus and started searching for gas as I was getting quite low and hadn't anticipated the remoteness of this stop.  About 10 miles ahead was a station so I made my way there.  Holy cow, I knew Illinois gas was high but $3.29 a gallon for regular?

After filling I set out for a big value time restricted bonus called the Garden of the Gods (COG) that was about 20 miles away.  There just wasn't a good way to get there.  Each Garmin was giving me conflicting directions.  After finally arriving I snap pictures of two different markers that had "Observation Trail" on them.  After the fiasco of the Old Trace bonus on Leg 1 I was playing it safe that one of these had to be the right one.

Leaving the state park, the Garmins were doing their thing again and trying to route me done 55 mph gravel roads. Ugh, this was getting old.  Trying to get to SH13 was proving to be a major time suck.  I'm sure I spent 20 extra minutes going back and forth on unmarked county roads trying to get out.  One interesting tidbit was that I passed this young bearded nature boy looking dude flying his drone just off to the north.  When I rounded the corner I realized what he was doing.  He was spying on a large strip mine/quarry. Not right, dude. Not the intended use of a UAV.

Finally turning west onto SH13 into the blazing setting sun, I made it into Harrisburg and continued on to Marion where I stopped for some dinner.  Ah, the air conditioning.  It was like 98 degrees outside and just that kind of oppressive heat that it sometimes gets.  I'm facing another 250 mile slog including passing through St Louis so my mind starts playing with me again.  I've done just over 500 miles today in the heat and I have at least another 375 to my planned stop.  There's just no way I can do it safely so I make the call that I'm done for the day and decide to book a room in Marion and replan the rest of the Leg.  What a wasted day.  3 bonuses, 500 miles and only 967 points.  Pitiful.

Based on my prior experience I went straight to the hotel hoping that they could give me a good rest start receipt.  There was a pilot nearby but they are notorious for not being a good DBR.  The hotel was proving to be a problem as well.  Based on the way that I felt, I really didn't care at this point and heading inside for a shower, some planning time and bed.

After looking at my options, it seemed like the best bet was to backtrack through Kentucky into Virginia, North Carolina and back through West Virginia on my way to the finish line.  Not the highest point total but the bonuses were fairly close together and moderate point values.  With the route laid out and loaded onto the Garmins, I hit the sack.

I wrap this day with probably the hardest, most difficult to accept:

Lesson Learned:  Conditioning matters.  The first IBR finisher I ever met was Eric Bray at Mortons BMW in Fredericksburg, VA about 5 years ago.  I was just getting back into LD riding so the questions flowed.  The first thing he said about doing the IBR was conditioning.  Conditioning was the key.  Of course, I blew that off as any fat boy would do. Now I know why.  It's a very difficult thing to accept when you're a fat boy.  I've got to do something to improve the situation prior to the IBR.  Eric is a Navy man and is in impeccable condition.  I see posts of Jim Owen riding his bicycle everywhere.  Conditioning matters.

...Day 5 continued...