Pushing fast through the New Mexico desert, the FJR1300 making it's own music beneath me as Cracklin' Rosie is beamed into my crash helmet from space, I am forced to wonder ... Does it get any better than this?
Those thoughts, that experience, happened during my return from New Mexico. I had spent 32 of the previous 48 hours taking part in the motorcycle rally known as the "How the West Was Won".
What follows is an account of the few lows, and very many highs of that event.
The inaugural running of this event was last year. It was held in July and run in Colorado, the home state of the Rally Master. The event was an unqualified success and my account of it details the trials and tribulations I went through. Despite that I had an amazing time and a very creditable finish, something I hoped to build on this time.
I never expect to finish particularly high up the order because in this field that would be a level of arrogance that I don't possess. My approach is to simply try as hard as I can to finish as well as I can. I pay my fellow riders the respect of doing my best. If someone finishes higher than me (and some usually do) it is because they were, on the day, better than me and I can smile and shake their hand with genuine enthusiasm.
I also want to use this opportunity to publicly thank two people who have helped me beyond any expectation. Justin Phillipson, the Rally Master, who gave me a paid entry to the event last year and has been a good friend throughout. I will have a little more to say about Justin later. Secondly, when I applied for the rally this year I was informed that an anonymous benefactor had already paid one hundred dollars of my entry fee. Should anyone in this small community ever wonder why I am always willing to share information, help with planning and generally do anything I can to help make rallying easier, these two folk, and many others like them, are the reason. I like to continue this theme into my Ride Reports, usually finding something unique or representative of the sport that I hope it will inform others, as I am informed by reading the accounts of others. It's not for me to tell anyone how to Rally, but if I am able to share my experiences in any meaningful way, then hopefully that will help those looking for clues.
Two weeks prior to this rally I had entered another event in Arkansas. This was a 12 hour event organised by two riders I know well, and I was looking forward to a fun day riding and socializing. As can be seen from the picture it didn't work out quite that way. Early on during my ride I found myself on a road wholly unsuitable for my motorcycle, and it rewarded me for the abuse. It took me three of my alloted 12 hours to get out of the mess, and my day was done. That was not going to be allowed to happen again!
This year we were heading out of Albuquerque, NM, for 32 hours of riding through mountains and desert. I am often asked what these events are like. They are definitely endurance events. While many rallies have rest periods built into the format, they are not always compulsory and are treated by the riders as points opportunities, to be taken only if they make sense. It always makes sense to stop and rest if you need to quite regardless of the points on offer. So what we basically have here is a scavenger hunt on crack. There are no points for finishing first indeed the riders with the highest points often roll into the finish very close to the cut-off time, the time beyond which you DNF (Did Not Finish). Arrive at the finish before 2.00pm the following day or wave goodbye to any and all points you may have spent the last 32 hours and 1 second collecting! The message is clear - Don't Be Late!
Sartorial elegance in the pre-rally socializing Photo:Tyler Risk
We all arrived with a day to spare before the 6.00am Saturday start. That day is used for a variety of technical details to be completed .... Is it a motorcycle? ..Check .... Does it look okay? .. Check .... Are license and insurance documents in order? .. Check more carefully .. Is the Odometer accurate .. Go ride 20 miles and check.
That taken care of it is time to meet old friends and new, and help ourselves to beer from Justin's cooler, make any last minute adjustments to bikes or routing plans, and relax a while because at 5.30am the next morning, it is game faces on. The next day and a bit will be tough, fun, exhilarating, despair laden, or all of the above and probably at the same time.
Time to roll, dressed appropriately Photo:Tyler Risk
Accordingly, promptly at 6.00am over thirty motorcycles left a dark hotel parking lot and rolled out into the cold Albuquerque morning, not to re-appear until early afternoon the following day. One motorcycle (Nancy) left forty-five minutes later, but rather better rested than most! Now all Justin and his staff could do was watch a laptop screen as the satellite trackers on the bikes gave up the secrets of their progress. For the rest of us, it was down to business.
The rally had actually started a week beforehand. that was when the riders received the Rally Pack, a document listing all the available bonuses and setting the rules for the event. For me, and I suspect most others, the week had been spent deciphering the puzzle, figuring a few potential solutions, then refining a route that would gain as many points as possible. Justin had come up with a scheme that effectively meant no bonuses could be claimed without that affecting all the other bonuses the rider attempted. The whole thing was a two-thousand-mile jigsaw puzzle.
In a nutshell ... All the bonuses fitted into one of the five themes of Japanese Buddhism. Earth, Fire, Water, Wind and Sky. You needed a minimum of one bonus from each theme, 1150 points and a minimum of 1150 miles to be considered a finisher.
Scoring was complicated ... The theme containing the lowest number of bonuses had its points totaled, plus the rest bonus. That number was then multiplied by the number of bonuses in the theme with the largest number. The other three themes gave you the absolute value of the bonuses. That was it. Simple, and dangerously so. If you had, for example, two bonuses in your multiplied theme and eight bonuses in your multiplier theme, you needed a minimum of three bonuses in the three other themes or you risked your multiplied theme being swapped out for one with lower points.
I set off with the expectation of approximately 16500 points from three Sky bonuses plus Rest, multiplied by eleven, with the other bonuses topping up the score. The difficulty lay in the lack of opportunities to make many cuts if you were short of time, and the consequential loss of many, many points for missing a tiny bonus.
Leaving the Start Photo:Tyler Risk
In the end I brought in 13200 points. I had to cut a multiplier and about half of my rest bonus ... that was about 3000 points down the drain. I knew I had compromised my standing at the finish, but had no idea by how much.
Over the last year I have become increasingly familiar, and comfortable with my motorcycle. For this event I decided not to play safe, and designed a route that was more challenging than I have planned before. I was completely unsure of my ability to ride the miles I planned, but dammit I was going to try. It was going to mean being more efficient at stops, and keeping the wheels turning longer, and a little faster, than I normally do. The wide-open spaces of New Mexico and West Texas would surely help with that. When it comes to planning events like this, one usually gives some thought to the overall average miles per hour, after taking away any planned rest stop but making no allowances for collecting bonuses or gas stops. When asked I usually suggest an overall average of 45mph for newcomers, 50mph for those a little more experienced and maybe 55mph at the higher end. In the Eastern states that higher end might be a little fast, but in the West many riders can manage that. My route for this event was planned at an overall average speed of 60mph, and I actually achieved 59mph.
Now would be a good time to mention Justin's approach to rallies. Justin is a rider. His favorite times are spent covering vast swathes of the West in a very short time, and he brings that to his rallies.
Gather a collection of easily photographed bonuses in a wonderful location.
Solve a puzzle for added interest and fun in scoring
Go ride the wheels off your bike.
The scheme made for many 90 second bonus stops, and even the longer ones took no more than three or four minutes.
Rolling out from the hotel with 30-plus other motorcycles, into the dark of the Rio Rancho night brings a feeling of awe and anticipation that I always enjoy at a rally start. This one was no different as I gave thought to not embarrassing myself, and the thirty two hours ahead. The road was a divided four-lane. I knew Erik Lipps and I both wanted to go north, but the immediate exit only went south. We had discussed the way out, even to the point of asking Justin if we could exit the opposite way to the others (he said "No"). In the end, I watched Erik make a quick u-turn around the traffic light, and I simply followed him round.
We made great time to the first bonus, a simple roadside marker. I knew we would be hitting the second bonus around opening time, even if we rode at normal speeds. I asked Erik why we rode so fast given the complete lack of need. His reply, "Where's the fun in that?". Fair point. At this point we were both being followed by David Walls (FJR and helicopters), and at least one other rider. Beyond that I didn't know who was going north first but I couldn't see a route to big points without doing so. As it turns out, three of the top five were all at the first and second bonus locations together, so were were all thinking along broadly the same lines.
The second bonus, at the Kasha-Katuwe National Monument was where we began to unravel a little, to the tune of 30 minutes lost. Thanks to Erik's radar detector three of us arrived there with 15 minutes to wait before opening. That put us at bonus #2 on my plan, 15 minutes ahead of schedule. Five minutes before seven the "man" arrived, told us to wait and disappeared inside his hut not to re-emerge until 7.05am, whereupon he proceeded to collect money very slowly. When he finally gave the okay to proceed he told Erik there were locked gates ahead and that we would have to wait for him. I think he wanted breakfast before re-joining us waiting patiently. I had already taken the picture above and was ready to bugger off and claim the points anyway. Well, it was past the 7.00am-7.00pm that the bonus should have been available, and there was a locked gate that I had a picture of. But the others were nicer than me and they waited ... so I waited with them.
The result was that it was 7.30am before we were rolling out of that location, and that cost me quite a bit later on. When you are trying to keep stops down to 90 seconds, a 30 minute delay is very painful. A series of more straightforward bonuses followed before I was again heading south and west towards central New Mexico and had been blessed with good roads and even better weather. The heated jacket was now switched off and the riding was spectacular. New Mexico would be an awesome place to live for anyone with a fetish for sand!
Next up, the White Sands Visitor Center. Rules for this one were that the picture must be taken from inside the parking lot, during the opening hours. I was in good time, and good shape at this point:
Following White Sands was the Sunspot Astronomy and Visitor Center. This was a daylight only bonus, and although time was going to be a little tight, I had some in hand. It was about then that things decided to get a little difficult. The approach to this location was expected to be difficult. It comprised 31 miles of very tight, twisty roads. These are not the glorious fast-sweeping bends so beloved of motorcyclists, rather they are the tight mountain roads beloved only by goats. Heavy sports-touring motorcycles struggle here. The riding is technical and difficult ... and tiring.
So naturally the authorities had decided to renew the chip-seal. Then it started raining. Sixteen miles of that, in pouring rain was just what I needed after twelve hours riding, but up we went. The final fifteen miles in was still twisty, but at least the tarmac was older and better:
Worth noting here that I had made up a fair bit of time and was twenty minutes ahead of my plan. The route out was equally slow. By the time I reached the re-laid road it was dark. The rain had stopped but the road was wet. I have awesome lights on the front of the bike, but when the road surface is black and wet, there is not much to illuminate and visibility was very poor. You get times like this on these rides. You just suck it up.
Dropping south through a few more bonuses found me reaching Carlsbad Caverns very close to the time I had planned to be there. This was important because it was a crucial time-check. If I was at this National Monument on time then I could continue on to Guadalupe Peak, then Van Horn, TX for my planned Rest Stop. Between Carlsbad and Van Horn there are precious few places suitable to take a break, so I had to be sure before I headed further into the night.
The photograph was timed at 11.40pm, fifteen minutes past the planned time but plenty in hand to reach Van Horn before the cut-off at 2.00am. A swift run south broken only by the need to stop at Guadalupe for a photo-op saw me finally arrive at the Pilot Truck Stop at 1.15am, just twenty minutes behind the plan I made while sat on the sofa at home. Given the route I had planned this was a pleasing, if tired moment. That rounded off one thousand and sixty miles for the day at an overall average speed of 55mph. Day two would have fewer stops and some fast Interstate. The plan before then was to try to get some quality time in my sleeping bag.
Somewhere during this stop things unraveled a little. I will speak to this odd phenomena because I am not the only rider this affects. To begin with I made a decision to cut my rest stop short to increase the chances of picking up an additional multiplier bonus close to the end of the rally. The math of this was sound, even if I'm not convinced my reasoning at the time was. I would have happily cut the rest stop completely were it not for the fact that the rest points were also being multiplied and I couldn't see a route to more points.
Before I could head north and back to the barn I had a final southern bonus to collect. Marfa Lights has long been a favorite of mine and I was very happy to be paying that place a return visit. The four hundred and eighty five points represented about one third of my ultimate total, and that was just another reason to be happy. Accordingly, I headed out on US90 just after 3.30am having claimed 136 minutes of rest, some of it spent eating and the rest on an upturned milk crate outside the truck stop.
The 75 mile hop down to Marfa was right up there with the worst motorcycling experiences of my life. For some reason I was so desperately tired that I was struggling to keep the bike in a straight line. Despite the well marked, fast road I was in great danger of not actually making it and I needed to stop. In fact, I needed to stop three times during that short run. Yelling to myself, trying to force myself awake, even knowing that I would wake up anyway in a couple of hours when the sun rose, nothing helped. I took a few extra moments at the bonus to try to clear my head ... that didn't work either and I needed to stop three times on the run back to Van Horn.
My only explanation is that stopping, without actually sleeping, simply threw me from the rhythm I had established during the previous one thousand miles. My body had relaxed, my brain switched off and they were both fiercely resisting switching back on again.
By the time I got back to the gas station I had left two hours earlier I had reached a decision. Leaving early had given me a cushion that was meant to prevent a poor second day ruining the event with a DNF for time. As I said earlier, this rally didn't leave much room for dropping small bonuses, and my ride back to Rio Rancho was pretty much a straight shot. If I wanted a cushion, I had to create one.
I decided to burn some time waking up. I bought a large cup of the strongest coffee I could find, and drank it while the sky lightened and night turned into very early morning daylight. As I expected, I left the gas station feeling wide-awake and thoroughly refreshed. All that remained was the four hundred and fifty miles back to the barn, and a few bonuses along the way. I did gain some time back running fast on I-10 to El Paso. It's an odd feeling sitting there, cruise control doing the hard work, and watching the expected time of arrival at the finish run backwards.
The sand dunes at Rio Salado were, in the event, my final bonus of the day. I toyed with the idea of grabbing the final "extra" multiplier bonus but the GPS was clear; I needed at least forty minutes to go get it. I had the time but barely. I was really concerned that the fifteen miles of Coors Bypass through Albuquerque would cut my margin too fine. In the end I arrived at the finish with exactly forty minutes to spare. I could have moved up one place in the final positions by going for it, or I could just as easily failed to finish, if only by a minute or so. I made the correct decision, but I can still feel the burn!
I rolled quietly into the finish happy with my ride.
The How the West Was Won 2015 was now just a memory.
0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0
Following any event like this comes the scoring phase. That is when a knackered rider has to first get all of their evidence together and sit down with a member of the rally staff to figure out how many points you failed to get.
The opportunities to lose points during this phase are high, and regularly taken advantage of. I am indeed fortuanate that I rarely drop points at the table. I was scored by the ever-patient Tyler Risk, and gratified that I was awarded all the points I was claiming. That said, while I thought my score was decent I had absolutely no idea how many riders had scores more decent than mine.
The results were announced at the banquet later that evening. I was very pleased to have ridden into Third Place!
3rd Place Photo:Tyler Risk
As always, my thanks an gratitude go to the folk who organize these events that we may go play on our motorcycles in spectacular settings.