Go Discovery... GO!!!!!!

(yes, that's my pic, and yes, that's really what it looked like...)

Well, I can’t exactly hold you in suspense here, it’s pretty much front-page news around the planet that the big D blasted off in an absolutely picture perfect example of how it’s done yesterday at 4:53 pm.
What many headline readers will NOT catch, however, is that she almost didn’t. Through no fault of her own, either. More on that later.
Launch day for me started with the debate on when to go. My entry ticket specified I could not get in any earlier than 9:30 am, but my car pass stated that I couldn’t arrive any later than 12:30 pm. Much as I love KSC, I really didn’t want to spend 10 hours there in the baking sun, especially with nothing other than my $9 Walmart camping chair for accommodations. So the game became: how late could I depart and still make my entry window?
Rumours from the KSC staff and many locals were that the roads start clogging around here before sunrise on launch day, so I would have to consider this carefully. In the end I decided on leaving at 11:00 should work; hopefully the early birds would all be gone, and if not I still had an hour and a half to make what is normally a twenty minute drive.
The drive took, believe it or not, exactly twenty minutes. I never stopped the whole way.
This was but for the grace of God, because from my vantage point it appeared that the only roads in the entire county that hadn’t come to a screeching halt were exactly the ones I needed to get to KSC. Thankfully only one major road, the 528, was essential to get me over to the nearly secret back road entry on hwy 3. 528 is one of two main east-west causeways that bring traffic into the Cape and Cocoa beach, and the east bound lanes coming in were not only full, they had pretty much stopped. But the westbound side was free, and amazingly only but a handful of cars were getting off to go up the 3.
A few miles back from the space center I came upon a roadblock with two lanes. The left one was pretty backed up with guards explaining to folks that they couldn’t go any further, so I tried the right. I didn’t even have to stop, as soon as I pulled out my magic blue placard I was waved right through.
Nice.
(Note: This truly defies explanation, I really had a horseshoe lodged somewhere. Later reports from NASA stated the crowds around the Cape that day were some of the biggest they’d seen. EVER. Consider that some of the Apollo launches would pull in 1 million people, and you get the idea.)
And I just kept going, right on into the KSC visitor’s center parking lot. I even managed – don’t ask how – to bag a spot four rows back from the entrance. All the more incredible when you consider that there were at least 10,000 cars there already, and more on the way.
I then expected massive lineups at the entrance, but again was pleasantly surprised.
The gate operations for this were something on a scale I’d never seen there. Rather than using the usual five or six metal detectors inside, they had banks of them spread the entire width of the front entrance area outside with an army of guards for the bag searches. I actually got in quicker than my visit at Christmas. They should send the KSC security people out on tour to the airports to show them how it’s done.
Once through and back outside amongst the various buildings, though, it was a world gone mad.
There were thousands and thousands and thousands of people everywhere you looked. Lined up for buses. Lined up for food. Lined up for… I didn’t know, because I couldn’t see where the front of some lines went.
My main job at this point was to stake out a spot. I continued on out to the far reaches of the yard, starting at the rocket garden and working my way east. I came upon a huge clearing with bleachers, speakers and a big screen showing a live feed from the launch pad, so I set up shop. Looking around for a while, I realized that there were still a lot of buildings and trees obscuring the skyline in the direction of the pad, so I headed off further east to see what else were available. Finally, at the far end of the center, I found the “front lawn viewing area”. This is literally the last little piece of open grass in the north east corner of the property, and therefore is technically the closest you can get to the launch pad here. OK, I realize that an extra 1500 – 2000 feet at this point is a bit moot, but hey, why not. The other bonus is that, other than the KSC sign at the corner, the horizon is clear all the way to the tree line on the other side of the highway out front. And they also had the PA and big screen setup here as well. But even five hours before the launch, the place was nearly full. I carefully picked my way to the front corner, and as I looked around for a place to land an older gentlemen piped up… “The lady that was just sitting here in front of us has left, you’re welcome to grab her spot!”.
Awesome!
I was now front and center for the Greatest Show on Earth.
I spent the afternoon chatting with my new neighbors, a retired teacher by the name by the name of Larry along with his wife, son and daughter-in-law, who turned out to be very cool folks.
The family was originally from Iowa, and Larry and his wife now lived in Florida most of the year.
Even more than me, Larry was REALLY hoping Discovery was going to go today. Although he had seen launches from afar at his home in Ocala, none of them had seen one up close, so with the clock ticking to the end of the program he decided this would be it. However he was already out a considerable sum to fly his son and daughter-in-law down not once, but twice, as they had come down before for the earlier date that got scrubbed. So he was understandably most distraught at the idea of having to shell out for a third time.
Although it was scorching hot, the time went by pretty quickly. We got to follow along as the astronauts were suited up and all the systems were prepped, with Launch Control talking us through it all the way.
I had thought the area we were in pretty full when I arrived, but it was nothing compared to what it looked like by 4:00 pm. There litterally wasn’t an extra square inch to be had, as I looked back it was a sea of bodies all the way to the horizon.

With thirty minutes to go on the clock, things started to get tense.
Although Discovery’s systems were all A-OK, a problem cropped up the Range Control central computer. This meant that the Air Force command post that oversees all the tracking cameras for the shuttle and security was blind. And those cameras must be 100% operational in order for a launch to get the green light. There are a number of reasons for this, but one of the most important is the need for Mission Control to be able to closely watch the condition of the SRB’s and the external fuel tank in case something goes wrong, as when a large piece of foam detached from the tank in 2003 and fatally damaged Columbia when she tried to re-enter days later.
Twenty minutes go by, still no go.
The angst is becoming palpable.
Launch Control now tells us that they will add a five minute hold to the count at T-minus 5:00.
But that’s all they can do, once past that the launch window to meet the space station closes, and if they can’t sort the cameras out by then the launch will be scrubbed.
Ten minutes to go. Still no Range computer.
T-minus 5 minutes. The hold begins.
3 minutes left. No word.
2 minutes left. Still negative.
1 minute left. ..
No range computer.
The place goes silent.
We’re all holding our breath.
With less than ten seconds of hold remaining (I swear I am not making that up) the radio crackles… it’s the Range Control Officer.
“We are go on Range!”
The crowd doesn’t go wild, they go absolutely apeshit.
The count resumes.
All the umbilicals begin to retract.
At T-minus 1:00 the orbiter goes to internal power.
Next stop, T-minus 0:31.
This is one of the most critical moments, as this is where the shuttle takes over 100% control of her own thought processes, and her four main computers have to look at what’s going on and decide within fractions of a second if they all agree everything is good. This doesn’t always happen, in fact it’s the exact reason the night launch I waited to see in 1990 got scrubbed.
The clock counts down. Everyone is now standing on their toes…
“T-minus 30 seconds, Discovery’s computers in agreement, go for launch!”
The crowd roars again.
“10, 9, 8… go for main engine start”
Sparks fly from the igniters and a brilliant flash lights up the big screen as Discovery’s three main engines blast to life. In this instant, they start consuming fuel at a rate that would drain the average swimming pool in about 25 seconds.
“5, 4, 3, 2, 1…”

And then, as Marvin the Martian would say,

KABOOOOOM

When the shuttle’s SRBs light, there’s no turning back.
Being made up of solid fuel, they are in essence the world’s largest fireworks. Once on, you can’t shut them off, you can’t even slow them down. They’re going to go wherever they’re pointed, taking with them whatever they’re attached to.
And they’re going go there in a hurry.
Luckily the three main engines on the orbiter are pretty powerful in their own right, and since they can be steered, they are very effective at keeping the whole package on track.
Although the forests across the road block our direct view of the launch, it takes only about five or six seconds for something to appear.
And there was no mistaking what it was.
A huge group gasp was heard as it suddenly lit up the sky over the trees, the fiery blast from each SRB clearly visible.
I thought they’d be bright up this close, but nothing like this…

I had taken my sunglasses of so that I could work both my cameras, but in that instant I realized this was a big mistake. It was like gazing into a welding torch.
For a few seconds I just stared painfully in awe, and then realized I had to get pictures!
I raised the camera and snapped away, trying to balance taking in what I was seeing “live” with looking through the viewfinder to save something for posterity. Not easy.
Then the sound hit.
I have to say that element was just a bit disappointing. After the ferocious roar I’d experienced in ’89, I thought this would be even more intense. In fact it was just the opposite, at no point do I think it ever got more than about a half as loud as when I had watched it from across the intercoastal.
I suspect the reason for this is the terrain. When watching it with mostly water between your viewing location and the launch pad, there is very little to attenuate the sound. Anybody who’s ever had a conversation with someone in a boat halfway across a lake at their cottage will understand how dramatic this effect is. However, the visitors’ center at KSC is squarely in the middle of a forest, and trees are some of nature’s best natural sound suppressors, so I guess it makes sense.
Still, this was no jet streaking across the sky. Even if a little toned down, there was absolutely no mistaking the deep, crackling roar of that supersonic exhaust.
Supersonic?
Yep. The minute they’re lit up, the exhaust gases traveling out the back of the SRB’s reach about 6,000 mph (about 9,400 km/h) or around Mach 8, if you prefer. This is in large part why they sound like they’re tearing the fabric of the atmosphere apart.

Discovery was having an absolutely textbook flight. She rolled over on her back right on cue, and then once through the point of maximum atmospheric pressure got the go ahead to throttle up… and did. Perfectly.
I relaxed a little and now took a moment to just drink in the sight of the huge, beautiful white contrail streaking upwards.

Not a moment later, they called SRB separation, and sure enough you could actually see the two long white pillars peel away, flames fading out.

Then she was no more than a little yellow dot.

And that’s when it hit me.
This was it.
The last time I, or indeed many of the folks around me, would ever see this show.

The plan now is to go back to small scale commercial rockets to get the job done, so it may be a long, long time before we see something the size and might of the shuttle again.
So if you are so very fortunate as to be able to get down to the Cape in early April to see Endeavour off, I HIGHLY recommend you do.
One rarely, if ever, gets the chance to truly watch history in the making.
Especially on scale that, not long ago, only the gods could have imagined.

Godspeed Discovery

She is the grande dame of the fleet.
With more missions, more mileage and more “firsts” than any other spacecraft in history, orbiter OV-103, better known to us all as Discovery, will fly her last mission today.
And I will be there to see her off.
How could I not?
As you all know, I’m nothing if not a complete and total uber-geek when it comes to space stuff.
My deepest passion has always been the Mercury-to-Apollo years, when the technology was literally being invented faster than the materials and know-how could keep up, and every flight was a billion dollar sit-on-the-edge-of-your-seat gamble. 400,000 people pulled together as one, 24/7 for the better part of a decade, to pull off what many people then (and a few idiots still today) considered impossible, putting a man on the moon. Six times.
After such an incredible feat, NASA’s next act seemed on the surface a bit ho-hum.
Looked at pragmatically, the shuttle was really nothing more than a reusable space delivery truck.
It could only go into orbit and back and thus had none of the frontier romance of heading off to the moon or other planets.
But make no mistake… the shuttles are ANYTHING but ordinary.
30 years after their first flight, they still stand as the high water mark in machine engineering.
A few sobering facts…

Max Takeoff weight: 4,500,000 lbs (2,045,000 kgs)
Total thrust: 6,200,000+ lbs (equivalent to 44,000,000 hp)
Top speed: 17,440 mph (28,067 km/h) - Mach 25
Max altitude: 400 statute miles (643 km)
Max payload to low orbit: 63,500 lbs (28,803 kgs)
Total length of electrical wiring: 370 km
Number of pneumatic and hydraulic valves: 1,060
Number of circuit breakers: 1,440
Total number of parts: 2,500,000+

What we have here is a team of machines that can each blast the equivalent of two full tractor trailer loads of stuff all the way to orbit, stay there for weeks, and if necessary bring said amount of stuff BACK, withstanding temperatures of 3,000+ degrees F on the way down.
And do it over and over and over…
They are the most complex moving objects humans have ever created.
And Discovery is the undisputed queen bee.
Her record speaks for itself:

Most space flights – 39
Most miles in space – 150,000,000+
Most days in space – 359
Performed both Return-To-Flight missions after losses of both Challenger and Columbia
First recovery for repair of an in-service satellite
Launched the Hubble Space Telescope
Performed two repair missions on Hubble
Launched Mercury legend and hero John Glenn back into space

And she has one thing in particular that is near and dear to me, I have seen her fly before.
Way back in 1989 I was fortunate enough to be down in Florida when STS-29 launched, Discovery’s 8th mission. I was in Fort Lauderdale at the time, but was more than happy to make the 3 hour schlep up the coast at 4:00 am to see the spectacle of a lifetime. I was not disappointed.
We had to sit some two extra hours before they finally declared her “go”, but man… was it worth the wait.
As the radio called T-minus 6 seconds, we could just make out the glare of the orbiter’s three main engines firing.
Then at zero, the sun rose for the second time that day.
When the SRB’s (Solid Rocket Boosters) lit, the 4.5 million pound beast hopped off the pad with a vengeance, clocking more than 100 mph as her tail cleared the launch tower (a mere 200 ft up). Two massive columns of white hot plasma scorched earthward in the best fireworks display I’ve ever seen.
Then the sound hit us.
Even from some 12 miles (19 km) away on the side of the road in Titusville, the vibration was so intense it was hard to speak. From the way they rattled, I thought the large plate glass windows in the shops across the street from us were going to blow apart.
No theatrical reproduction of what this sounds like even remotely prepares you for the real thing.
The sound is in fact so powerful that if you were to be standing within 1000 ft or less of the launch pad the sheer intensity of it would kill you.
We stared in awe as it climbed.
Then the call “go for throttle up, 104%” came. That always catches my attention.
On the one hand, I think it’s the coolest sounding command of the space age, I mean, they don’t go to 100%, they go to 104%. It’s like somebody at NASA decided that the shuttle engines could go to 11.
In reality, the reason is late in the development phase the folks at Rocketdyne were able to certify the engines at 104% of their original rated power, but since the flight planning had already been done with the original ratings, it was easier just to create a new setting of 104% (apparently they can now even be brought up to 109% in manual override, but I don’t know if that’s ever been used).
But on the other hand, that call is also more than a bit chilling.
It’s the last thing the crew onboard Challenger heard before a bad SRB gasket cooked their fuel tank and quickly thereafter vaporized most of their spacecraft.
Having occurred less than three years earlier at that time, this was no doubt the reason everyone – me included - seemed to hold their breath for just an instant.
But all was good.
A moment later, we heard “SRB separation” and the ominous white brutes were let go. We could just barely make out the contrails arcing away from the orbiter some 150,000 ft up. What a sight.
The orbiter then pretty much disappeared from view but we all stood transfixed, listening in a trance as Mission Control called out the numbers:

“3 minutes 15 seconds… Discovery now 51 nautical miles in altitude, 66 nautical miles downrange, velocity now reading 6500 feet per second.”
“5 min 15 sec, Discovery now 63 nautical miles in altitude, 202 nautical miles downrange, velocity now reading 11,000 feet per second”
“7 min 30 sec, Discovery now 67 nautical miles in altitude, 485 nautical miles downrange”
“8 min 15 sec, Discovery now 75 nautical miles in altitude, 650 nautical miles downrange, velocity 24,900 feet per second, standing by now for main engine cutoff”
“8 min 45 sec, MECO (main engine cutoff)”

That’s it, she was in space.
The crowd roared and applauded.
Although that was some 22 years ago, I can recall it like it was yesterday.
I nearly had the chance to witness something even more spectacular, a night launch, the very next year.
I was back down for spring break again in Pompano Beach with my gang, and on the very last night before our return, Atlantis was scheduled to launch a secret military payload at around midnight.
We’d figured this was obviously too good to pass up, so we decided to stop in Titusville to catch it.
But delay after delay was called, and finally around 2:00 am, with only 30 seconds left in the countdown, they scrubbed. Talk about a letdown! Especially since we now had to get back in the cars and drive back non-stop back to Montreal in order to be back at work on time. Sans sleep.
For whatever reason, I have never been able to synch up my vacation schedule to make it to another launch since. But fate has a funny way of intervening. Around five years ago, my mother decided she was going to try and spend a few months each winter down in Florida, and lo and behold, the best deal she got was at a little gated community on the beach in Cape Canaveral, some 20 minutes from the Space Center. I swear I had absolutely nothing to do with this.
But no matter when I’ve come to visit, I haven’t been able to catch a launch.
Until now.
With the shuttle program officially ending in June 2011, I realized this is pretty much it, only three chances left, and the last one in June, STS-135, is not even officially funded yet. So really it’s two.
Originally scheduled to go in November, Discovery’s last mission got pushed back when they found some cracks in the main fuel tank (that big orange thing in the middle). This is generally considered bad, what with it containing several million pounds of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen.
So they began working on a fix, and the date kept getting pushed back. Finally they locked it in on Thursday, February 24th. I looked at my calendar. Hmmm. Work schedule was manageable. Mom leaves to come home that Saturday, check flights and… bingo! I managed to score West Jet $129.00 one-way special just days before the launch.
But the best was yet to come.
The original plan was to walk to the end of my mom’s beach, which puts you in Jetty Park at Port Canaveral. This is about 15 miles (25 km) from the launch pad. As you can’t really get any closer on than 11 – 12 miles anywhere else, this is pretty good. And certainly convenient.
But I really had always wanted to witness a launch right from Kennedy Space Center.
Lord knows I’ve tried.
On many occasions when a launch was announced, I’d race the KSC website to see if I could score a pass. No dice. These things get snapped up quicker than Justin Bieber tickets.
And sure enough, the minute I had booked the flight, I went straight to the KSC site.
“Sorry, and thanks for playing…”
I didn’t expect otherwise.
So yesterday I decided just the same to get some use out of my annual pass and go see what was happening at Kennedy, get some shots of Discovery on the pad, and catch some of the buzz.
And it was then I discovered that they actually still had visitor’s center passes.
(Pause, look of disbelief)
“One, please!”
I suppose good things do come to those who wait.
So I am off now to bid the lady adieu on her final mission, and to hear the mighty roar of 6 million+ pounds of thrust tear the sky apart for what is now nearly the very last time.
And I’ll be a mere 6 miles away.
Stay tuned... :)

Bringing Home Bella

OK, this one’s a cop-out, it’s actually an oldie from 2006 that I dragged out from my MySpace page; the story of how my one year fling with a certain curvy and cantankerous Italian began. I got a good chuckle re-reading it and thus thought it perhaps worthy of some tweaking and a re-post up here…

After years of mainstream happy, hassle-free Honda riding, I have succumbed to the Italian bike bug. Seemingly not satisfied with having but one demanding mechanical mistress - my ever competent but fiendishly complex Audi A4 - I came upon this particular gig by accident, quite literally.
While riding along Upper Lachine road in NDG one beautiful August evening on my trusty old VF1000R, an elderly man in a parked Cavalier decided to pull out and make a u-turn right in front of me. The result was semi-predictable. I slammed the old girl as far as she would go to the left, but in the end was missing about two feet of room to make it past. The right side of the VF’s lower fairing, engine and frame crashed first into the front wheel, then tore off the bumper. I didn’t see this first hand, as I had since left the bike and was flying over the hood with my eyes closed, hitting the pavement and rolling to a stop about twenty feet further away. I suffered nothing but a tiny bruise on my right hip (from the ratchet handle I had been carrying in my pocket), which is a testament to why you should ALWAYS wear your gear, even when it’s 32C outside. And to her credit, the massive VF is truly one tough old broad... the Cavy had to be towed away, but I simply picked the bike up, pushed the starter button and rode her home, minus one foot peg.
Once the insurance settled I got busy searching for parts, no mean feat for a bike that's 21 years old and was imported by the dozens, not thousands. Fate was about to intervene though.
A few days later Pete decides to go check out a new local Ducati club meeting and cons me into tagging along. I listen to their cult-like spiels and tell them that yes, really, I love the bikes - Pete's 900SS in particular - but even with the insurance cheque coming they're a wee bit out of my range. They all immediately come back with "yeah, but you gotta check out the deals in the ‘states, they're givin' em away!!". I nod politely.
The very next day, Pete e-mails me a picture of a very clean '94 900SS/CR that some guy in New Hampshire is selling... to me, says Pete. I laugh it off until I see the price.
Half of what Pete's cost.
Now granted he has the fancy-schmancy SS/SP, but still...
Having convinced me that there's in fact no catches, this is the real deal, I make an even lower offer, and the guy accepts! Now I just have to figure out how to get it here.
We had agreed to meet in the Laconia area, as Eddie - the previous owner - lived down at the bottom of the state and it seemed like a reasonable distance for each of us, plus it would give him one last chance to ride it before parting ways.
The forecast looked pretty good, calling for sun and 10C in Laconia, and a chance of rain as we got closer to the border crossing in Champlain NY where I would be storing it for a few days while the paperwork was being sorted out. Quite workable.
Pete volunteered to come along and drive the car back. We set out around 8:30 with the A4's thermometer reading -2C, a wee bit chilly, but otherwise a bright and beautiful day.
By 11:30 we had reached the agreed upon spot outside of Laconia, and not long after Eddie pulled in with his wife following.
Man what a sight! The thing was just gorgeous, with a few bitty scratches here and there but otherwise resplendent, loud and proud in a way only very red Italian rides can be. Eddie had obviously taken great care of it, something that somehow been evident even in our correspondence and had made me comfortable about buying it nearly sight unseen. And the sound.... aaaarrrrggghhh... nothing sounds like a Duc with straight mufflers, a staccato symphony in V-twin minor...
Eddie turned out to be a real kindred spirit, having as bad or worse a case of gearhead as me or Pete, we exchanged all kinds of stories and agreed to try and get together for some future rides.

Older man meets Italian temptress, mayhem ensues

We finally headed out around 12:30, clouds were moving in but we’d no major worries at that point. I had Pete's electric vest wired up and with a few layers of good gear was snug and happy. Getting used to the way the 900SS rode and handled was another matter entirely. It's like having worked with chainsaws alll your life and then being handed a scalpel. You can pretty much pick out which pebble you want to aim for on the far side of the apex rather than just work on staying in your own lane. And the brakes - for me anyway - were insane. Sneeze while squeezing and you'd soon be seeing the pavement up close and personal.
For sure it doesn't have the big, electric top end thrust of the V4 Honda motors I've been raised on, but the bottom and midrange is just as good, and it was almost as fast if you actually used the gears, something the Hondas didn't require; leave in 5th and forget. A switch to Keihin 41mm flat-slide carbs apparently changes this, giving it significantly more high end power and a 250 km/h + top speed, which is more like what I was used to. Time for a little e-Bay search, me thinks...
Getting used to the V-twin buzz in one's posterior was another matter too, but after a few hours I didn't pay much attention.
Besides, did I mention the sound?
Mmmmm, who needs an i-Pod...
About an hour in we began to climb the White mountain range between N.H. and Vermont, and the temperature definitely began to drop. I actually felt a slight chill coming through my very well insulated boots, something that's never happened and a sign it was getting colder than I could ever recall up to that point in my two-wheeled career. The vest was still keeping the core cozy though, so it was no big.
Well, that is until it started, uh, snowing.
Yes, that's right, fine white flakes appeared down the road and swept straight towards us. I didn't panic, as the road surface was still OK and I figured this was an altitude thing that would be done as soon as we dropped on the other side, which in fact turned out to be the case about 20 or 30 minutes later. We had dodged the weather bullet. Or so I thought.
The next few miles passed without incident, and as we approached Montpelier VT a light rain began to fall. It was getting on towards 4:00 pm, about time to grab a bite anyway so we took refuge in the local Applebee's. As we chowed down and admired Ms. Duc's fine Italian figure through the window, we began to notice some small white particles bouncing off the seat.
Ice pellets.
Lovely.
By the time we finished it had gone back to straight rain, but was it getting steadier rather than backing off. Well, I can live with it, I thought, please just stay liquid…
We made a quick run into the local mega-grocer to stock up on a few American-only delicacies and set off on the final leg.
Being that the weather now looked like it wasn't going to get any better we decided to run straight up the 89 and cross over into NY at Rouses Point, about the quickest way from where we were.
The next hour on the interstate was very wet and cold, with the temps hovering just above freezing, but strangely, as sport bikes go one could hardly ask for a better tool for the task. The Conti tires split the water with great efficiency, and the Duc’s rigid trellis frame would faithfully telegraph even the most minute changes in traction and road surface, inspiring tremendous confidence in otherwise horrendous conditions.
By the time we got to the turn off for NY it was pretty much dark, and the rain showed no sign of letting up. We stopped for a quick gas-up, and a chance to try to regain some movement in my fingers which were now beginning to suffer the consequences of this mad pre-winter dash. My neck and upper back was getting pretty soggy as well, as my wool tube neck warmer was now acting as a giant sponge, and the relentless rain blast on my torso had finally bested the water resisting abilities of my jacket, leaving me with a rather wet, if at least not frozen, belly. Thankfully the heated vest hadn't shorted out, an unlikely but still rather exciting prospect I was not keen to experience.
This last bit was the by far the worst, the cold and rain now such that my visor wouldn't stay clear at the lower back road speeds, remaining only just clear enough to see if I controlled my breathing perfectly. Alternatively I could crack it open, but anything near enough to make a difference had my face being pelted with stinging ice water.
The traffic in front of us seemed to be going slower and slower, and with the conditions and extremely limited visibility I had in the pitch black it was nearly out of the question to pass on the winding road. To make matters worse, the bike now seemed to be getting cranky for some reason, like it was just cold, fed up and wanted a nice warm garage somewhere and a glass of fine synthetic 5w40. Or perhaps an owner who was more inclined to be riding around in the Tuscan sun instead of this northern hell.
After a time of observing the symptoms - bucking, misfiring at low revs and increasingly sluggish throttle response - I considered the weather conditions and my mind harkened back to the days of pilot training. I realized what was happening - carburetor icing! At least we weren’t chugging along at 5000 ft.
This of course does generally not improve unless one introduces some form of heat into the intake, and unlike the old 172's I've flown, the Carb Heat lever was nowhere to be seen (note: I was quite amazed to see later on in the shop manual that some Ducatis actually had this feature. But this begged the question… who else was stupid enough to be out riding in this kinda stuff?).
We finally began to see lights and a bit of civilization, meaning we were approaching Champlain and our final destination, Paulo's vacant U.S. office where the bike was to be parked while being cleared for her new citizenship. I kept the revs up at the stoplights, hoping some vestige of heat would creep up and keep the throats clear, not knowing how much time I had before they would freeze completely.
C'mon honey, you can make it...
Soon enough we crossed over the 87 and I began to look for an abandoned strip mall as described by Paulo. It was all I could do to see the road at this point, so after a run back and forth past the expected spot, Pete suggested I stay put in a nearby parking lot and set out to locate it with the car. Sitting there with my visor up and no need to concentrate on staying alive, I then spotted in the distance an outline of what looked like our building, right where it was supposed to be. Pete returned moments later confirming this.
We located the correct door, unlocked the place and pushed her in.
Despite the harrowing journey the paint still glowed a clean, bright red, the whole bike looking absolutely unperturbed by the experience. The same may not perhaps have been the case with the rider, but his circulation and faculties (or what vestiges of which he had to begin with, anyway) seemed to be returning.
Just as we stood there admiring, sizable chunks of ice began to drop from where the carbs lived up underneath the frame, and shatter on the floor.
A perfectly punctuated ending for one of the better entries in my Dumb-Things-I-have-Done log.

Ian's Perfect Car

Well folks it seems yours truly has had the honour of being “tagged” by someone much farther up the writing food chain, that being none other than freelance auto journalist Miranda Lightstone. You may have read her work in a number of places, the Montreal Gazette, Auto123.com, Askmen.com, but my favourite stuff is actually her personal blog where she writes just any old damn thing she pleases, always managing to come up with an intriguing subject, anecdote or wonderfully worded point of view. I also am readily impressed by people who are different, non-conformist or break preconceived notions of who or what we’re all supposed to be, so the very fact that Miranda is an anglo female auto journalist from Montreal by itself assures her a rarity and uniqueness possibly on par with the Loch Ness monster.

http://drivingmsmiranda.wordpress.com/

But this “tagging” business means I now have to try and follow her lead on the subject at hand, of which you may have cleverly have divined from the title is The Perfect Car. Originally I thought I would just shamelessly steal the same Top Ten format Miranda used and insert my own shopping list, but I then decided that:

A. That’s a cop out

B. That also by nature lends itself to being concise, thus cutting down the possibilities on me going off on one of my long-winded, James May style dissertations. We can’t have that. You might stay awake, and this in turn would greatly interfere with my ultimate plan of selling this blog to a major pharmaceutical supplier as a device to help study sleep disorders.

Where were we? Oh yes, Perfect Car. For me, you say? Well let me tell you, if there’s one thing I’m primed and ready to blog about this is it, because I’ve just spent the better half of a year trying to decide this very thing. Have I yet to achieve it? To find out I’ve decide to go back through my own 4 wheeled scrapbook and see if I can come up with anything that fits that descriptor.

Until it was time to make this very purchase again a few months ago, it had never even vaguely occurred to me that my auto buying rationale, um, wasn’t. Without exception, every car I’ve ever bought previously in the last 30 years was a 100% total and complete impulse deal. Considering that I’ve never had a piece of property in my name, this means the most expensive thing I’ve ever owned has always been bought on a whim. That’s either delightfully refreshing, or terribly frightening. I’m not actually sure which. But it is most definitely me. People are always confounded when I tell them I am largely ruled by my emotions. I guess my obsession with science, logic and how the world works leads them to assume that I decide things in an orderly fashion based on sound principles. Not quite. If you were to actually peer inside my noggin, you would see something that most resembles the scene at the end of the first Raiders of the Lost Ark movie, the one where the camera pans back to reveal an enormous warehouse of random sized boxes piled in jumbled rows that appear to go on for miles. So what I decide on any given day tends to have more to do with which box I happen to open rather than some prosaic formula.
Let’s start with the ultimate example of this, which occurred roughly half way through my driving life when I saw my first Miata. I can recall this like it was yesterday. I had just picked up the March 1989 issue of Road & Track and when I saw the cover, I thought I was looking at an old Lotus Elan, until I read the tag beside it that said it was a new Mazda.
Huh?
That’s impossible. They don’t make cars like this anymore. Except now, apparently, they do again.
My first exposure to British sports cars had been courtesy of my aunt, who had a string of Triumphs and MGs when I was a wee lad, and I was always captivated by the sound and feel of the little roadsters. Sitting in those low-slung buckets with the shifter up high, peering out the tiny windscreen with rows of gauges just below, listening to the throaty roar of the little four banger with the clouds racing by overhead… you could very well imagine yourself in a real Spitfire mixing it up with ME109’s in the skies over London. But the sad reality was when I became of driving age, the only examples left of these that I could afford were awful. Clapped-out, slow, and horribly unreliable, there was no way even the romance of the experience was going to overcome the fact that they were not even close to useable daily transportation. So when Mazda re-invented the recipe with solid all-Japanese mechanicals, it’s absolutely no exaggeration to say by the time I had finished reading the article my mind was made up – I was buying one. And sure enough, one of the first ones to arrive at Mazda 2-20 became mine.
This was not a matter of need. At the time I had a two year old 16V GTI, one of the fastest compacts of its day and a brilliant all-around car. And I still owed quite a bit of money on it. But I HAD to have the Miata. So I did whatever it took to make it happen - which wound up being a lot, but that’s another story in itself. However I don’t regret a single moment. About as quick as the GTI but with even better handling and the best brakes of any car I’ve owned even today, it was also nearly indestructible (still the only car I managed to own for two years and break NOTHING) and offered as pure a driving experience as could possibly exist. A bonus was having one on the streets of Montreal in the early fall of 1989 was about as close to being a rock star as I’m likely to ever get. Although they are as common as Kraft Dinner now the Miata was nothing less than a sensation when it came out, and I got stopped by everyone just about everywhere I went with it. Driving down Crescent St. with it the first time on a Saturday night was hilarious, everyone completely ignored the rows of ever-present exotics and came running to surround my little red soap bar, hands pointing and mouths a-buzzing.
Was it the perfect car? No. Was it the perfect car for me? Being in my twenties with no long term commitments to anything, it probably was. Beyond the obvious sports car qualities it got great gas mileage, had just enough trunk space that me and a buddy managed a lengthy winter trip to Florida and back in it; I had just gotten big into rallying in those days and it was excellent at that, and I even managed to win some winter events with it! Speaking of which, I recall one artic-like morning when most of the cars on our street refused to start (including my ex, the GTI, which was still in the family). But the Miata fired up first turn of the key and motored away without a hitch. The heater was in fact so strong that when pointed straight ahead the dash vents would defrost the REAR window of the hardtop! I didn’t care that it was tiny and a long way from being a macho ride, it was an absolute blast and if driven with skill on any kind of challenging road, or better still on a track, would humiliate many much more powerful cars with ease. This car was so connected it was like an extension of your own limbs.
Sadly two years later I made the painful decision to sell it so that I could finance my commercial pilot’s license. I’ve driven a few early examples since, and have to admit that in today’s crowd they feel woefully underpowered and very basic. But they’re still wonderfully responsive, and the closest thing to a go-kart that you can drive on public roads for so little money.
The Miata as it turns out would be the last new car I would buy, once I had finished with flying school I had decided that the depreciation was too much of a killer and also one could find much more interesting used stuff for less money, assuming you didn’t mind the lack of warranty and getting your hands dirty occasionally. Which I didn’t. The cars I drove during the flight school years were ones of financial necessity, an old hand-me-down 626, a VW Fox and a delightful mongrel I dubbed Franken-Audi, an ’86 5000 Avant with a dead motor but in otherwise perfect shape that I found for $400. I swapped in an ’87 high compression 2.3 motor and an early short-ratio manual, as the FWD wagons were only ever sold as automatics here and I generally despise slushboxes. That was one awful job, but the finished product was a surprisingly quick, and it was great fun seeing the mechanics at the dealership tilt their heads like puzzled dogs when they looked at the model badging and saw the stick shift inside…
I had just only decided that it was maybe time to move on when fate intervened and a client at Lazer showed up with what would be turn out to be the another candidate for Ian’s Perfect Car list: a pristine 1990 Audi 90 Quattro 20V. He was having his first child and thought it time to get something more practical – read: wouldn’t require re-mortgaging the house to maintain. Once again, love at first sight. Having tasted Audi-ness with the 5000, I wanted more, and this car was much more. Its 2.3 20V inline 5 cylinder engine put out 162 hp, a pretty impressive figure for such a small motor back then and could be tweaked even higher. But the clincher was the Quattro system. If you’ve never driven a good AWD car in the rain or snow, you have no idea what a difference this makes. Suddenly, you’re Superman, able to leap past traffic through vast, snowy intersections in a single bound. My first winter with this car was like a trip back to being a six year old with a brand new shiny toboggan at the top of a really big hill. I still remember laughing hysterically the first time I powered out of a drift-covered corner out on a snowy rural road with four big rooster tails shooting out behind me. You could pull the most amazingly stupid moves on any nasty surfaces in this thing and the Torsen center differential would just simply go about its business and move the power around so you wouldn’t die a horrible, fiery death at the bottom of some ravine. Amazing. But the 90 had something else: refinement. From its electric, heated Recaro sport seats with position memory and fully optioned interior to its stealthily solid and quiet highway ride, it was a cut above anything else I’d ever owned.

There was nothing you couldn’t do with this car. Daily commute? A breeze. Arrive at a fancy function? You’re a player. Rallies? Are you kidding??? Long distance high speed trips? How soon do you need to be there? In fact the 90 20V still holds the record for my fastest Montreal-Toronto run at 3 hours and 45 minutes. An exact time it managed not once but twice. Its most impressive performance ever though was in my time living in Toronto. I was managing the wheel and tire shop I worked at on Saturdays, and woke up one morning during winter changeover season to discover that I had 35 minutes to get to work and open the door before the crowd accumulating outside would revolt. And that was more than 50 kms away. I got dressed, jumped in the beast, hit the 407, and was there 17 minutes later. I’ll let you do the math.
And it sounded fabulous. With the custom designed glass-pack exhaust I had made for it, nothing on earth sung like that thing. The signature, syncopated 5 cylinder wail when you opened it up was spine tingling, and never got old.
The 90 was also one tough son of a bitch, having survived things that would have likely destroyed lesser rides. Beyond the usual rally adventures down dirt roads and over railroad crossings at Dukes of Hazard speeds, it was capable of absorbing some forms of punishment that nearly defied explanation. I once made a U-turn in a parking lot during a blinding rainstorm and ran it straight into a median. I got out to survey the damage but didn’t see any, so I drove it the 50 km or so back home. The first sign of trouble was when I braked for an off ramp a half hour later and the oil pressure warning light came on. Not good. I gingerly eased it the last few kilometers to the house and when I got out and looked carefully underneath, I discovered the entire front wall of the alloy oil pan had taken a direct hit and shattered. The engine had made it the whole way home running on less than a liter of oil (Mobil 1 synthetic at least, thank God). I had the pan repaired, re-installed it, and it ran exactly the same as it ever had. No noises or oil consumption and perfect compression. It also once suffered an injector failure about halfway to T.O., but made the rest of the trip on 4 cylinders with ease, flying along in the left lane, business as usual. It never failed to start, never left me stranded, got me through some of the toughest years of my personal life and handled everything I could ever throw at it effortlessly. An incredible car. But after 5 years and some 271,000 kms on the clock (171,000+ of which was mine), she was finally beginning to show her age; it was time to move on. I don’t mind admitting that the day I drove to the SAAQ office to transfer it I cried like a baby. That car had become a part of me.

The replacement was probably the first, faint signs of logic creeping into my car buying process. Having so loved the 90, it only made sense to look at its descendant as a replacement, and that would be the A4. I had already driven a few examples and it was clear that this was a different animal. All new body shell and chassis, multi-link suspension; this was obviously the postman’s child as there was really nothing other than the block in the optional V6 engine to trace it back to its predecessor. But what a kid they made. Smoother, quieter, faster, this car was like a time machine. You had no sense that it was particularly quick; it just ate kilometers with so little effort that you thought everyone else around you was driving at a glacial pace. And she was a looker. The 90, to be frank, had a mug only a mother could love, but this car was something else. To this day I still find it to be one of the most perfectly designed affordable 4 door sedans. Every line on it flows seamlessly into the next, the cabin, trunk and hood are all in perfect proportion. OK, maybe that protruding grille area that defined the 1990’s Audis seems a little dated now, but then this is akin to faulting Rachel Weisz for her bodacious schnoz.
Being a far more popular model it was easy to find a clean used one, so when a friend offered to give the 90 a new home I went to try several examples, finally settling on a low mileage 1998 1.8 T Quattro in the de rigueur silver hue. With an order of magnitude more fiddly parts available and never able to leave well enough alone with any car I’ve owned, I of course got busy with mods. First up was a full APR exhaust and ECU chip which added another 50+ hp. With considerably more power that the 90 as well as a limited slip rear diff and later some studded Nokians, the A4 was the fastest car I had ever driven on winter roads and an absolute weapon of mass destruction in winter rallies, probably claiming more frosty podium spots than all my other cars combined.
But only a short time into ownership I realized this thing was going to be a bit of a hangar queen. I knew that the design had a few weak spots, notably suspension control arms and wheel bearings, but boy, could it eat through those things. I quickly became a pit stop expert on changing the arms and eventually even bought the special tooling to change the bearings myself. But the worst happened at 128,000 km when the factory timing belt tensioner let go. Although the book said it was supposed to only be changed at 192,000 km, I had been warned by many sources that this was a known fault on the car and to change it to an updated version ASAP. The worst part was I had already bought the kit and had picked out a weekend a mere three weeks away to change it. The real problem now was that the A4 has an interference design motor, meaning when the timing belt breaks the valves crash into the tops of the pistons. So not only was the belt snapped but there was untold carnage waiting inside.
Thankfully friend Peter Kirby (who coincidentally was the 90's new keeper) came to the rescue and offered his garage for the surgery, which as you can well imagine was epic. Over the course of two weekends and five very late week nights I managed to completely strip the front of the car down to a naked cylinder block, get the head rebuilt and get it all back together. And running. With no leftover parts! Well, not that I recall anyway.
And while I had thousands of bits scattered about Peter’s garage, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to turn the volume up a notch. I swapped out the factory K03 turbo for a bigger K04 unit from the 225hp TT, added a 5 bar fuel pressure regulator and some aggressive software courtesy of Aaron Neumann of Neuspeed fame, upping the ante to some 240hp and 265 ft-lbs of torque. And in case there was any doubt as to how quickly that would fire it down the road, during its first fully tuned road test I managed to collect some documented testimony from the local SQ constabulary. To the tune of 152 km/h in a 100 zone. It was about the only time I smiled when I got the bill. Man, did this thing cook.
After the major meltdown I have to say the car settled into a reasonable groove. I got better at changing the bearings and they were now starting to go 2 years+ without problems, and the jobber parts guys slowly started making better and better control arms that would go a lot further as well. In due time I changed more stuff, but nothing really untoward considering the mileage I racked up. Although a more insulated and detached driving experience than the 90, the A4 was still the king of making very faraway places seem much closer. You could easily go 12 hours or more and get out absolutely no worse for the wear. And despite the 60% increase in power from the mods, it got better fuel mileage than when stock! Good looking, refined, fast, economical, reasonably reliable and able to handle anything Mother Nature could throw at it. Could this be the Perfect Ian Car?...
I suppose that list should make it as qualified for the title as anything discussed so far. But still there’s something missing from the equation, that burning emotional bond that the Miata and the 90 forged deep inside my psyche never grew quite as strong with the A4. Like the Six Million Dollar Man, it did everything faster and better. Calmly and without any undue stress. But somehow that very lack of drama made it, dare I say it… predictable? So after a record eight years and 166,000 km on my watch I decided it was time for a change.

But what to buy? Considering all the A4 offered it would be hard to improve upon. I briefly toyed with the idea of pulling a complete 180 and getting a Mustang convertible, a car so far in the opposite direction from the A4 that it could have originated from an alien race. But as much as I loved the raw, all-American experience they offered, I quickly realized that as an avid biker now my requirements had become a little more skewed; it would mostly get used when it rained or snowed. It became clear that a drop-top ‘Stang with its front weight bias and RWD made as much sense as the proverbial bicycle for fish. Back to reality then.
One thing I knew I desperately wanted back was a kickass exhaust note. Yeah, I know, how old am I? But really, few things connect you with a good performance car as much as that purring voice. The crazy caterwaul of the inline 5 was still burning bright in my memory. So, has to be reasonably refined, have AWD, sound cool, look good, and especially be emotionally involving to drive. And oh yeah… be automatic.
Excuse me?
Could you repeat that?

Yeah, I said the “A” word.
Wait a minute. Aren’t you the guy who spent six months trying to jam a manual into a car that clearly hadn’t been built for it? Um yes. Not only that, but earlier in my auto history I had done this very same feat with a ’77 Capri. That’s pretty hard-core testimony for my dislike of the auto box. But the sad fact is since moving to Chateauguay and commuting to Vaudreuil every day was beginning to take a toll on my skeletal alignment, and as the traffic began to seriously worsen in the last year I thought it was pretty much time to finally consider this drastic measure.
There was a new hope though. Some seven years ago VW and Audi pioneered the world’s first dual clutch electronically controlled manual gearbox for the road, the DSG. This rather incredible device offers the best of both worlds; the efficiency, control and performance of a manual coupled to the clutch-less ease in traffic of an automatic. It only took one test drive and I was hooked. Full auto when you needed it, and lightning fast 8 millisecond manual shifts when you felt like being Schummy. Now I just needed a car to go with it. The list became small in a hurry. The only AWD cars offered with this in Canada were the TT and the A3. But the only TTs that fit into my sub-30K budget criteria were the early gen ones based on the MK4 Golf, however all the A3s sold here have the newer MK5 platform. If you’ve ever driven both, it’s pretty clear that the MK5 is a quantum leap in chassis development. In fact five years later, Car and Driver still picked it as their favourite handling compact FWD platform. In an industry where major advances occur seemingly every month, that’s astounding. So then, the choice was pretty easy. No difficult engine or option choices to make either, as the only way you could get an early A3 Quattro was with the DSG tranny, 3.2 VR6 engine, and all the S-Line sport gear. So there it was.
Just to be sure, I spent at least a month putting together a very comprehensive spreadsheet that compared the pricing, interest rates, maintenance, insurance, mods, fuel and any other conceivable long-term costs you could think of and had an Electronic Showdown with all of the cars that I had seriously considered. Some of the contenders were:

Mustang - Wondeful back-to-basics fun, but killed for obvious reasons when sanity prevailed

New Golf TDI - Came to me in a momentary tree-hugging epiphany (I'm starting to get these more frequently) but killed for lack of AWD and high purchase price with any meaningful trim

2002-2008 A4 2.0T or 3.2 – excellent, sensible and logical choice. But still uses slush-tech auto (albeit a good one), and just too much the same as curent ride

2004-2008 S4 - awesome beyond words with its fire breathing 7000 rpm 40 valve V8, but sadly killed by its horrific planet and wallet destroying fuel consumption. Also would HAVE to be manual, ensuring by next year I’d need be put down due to hip dysplasia

2009 A3 2.0T Quattro – Great performance/economy ratio, but killed by still-too-new high resale

2006-2008 A3 3.2 Quattro – Ding Ding Ding!!!! We have a winner!

Yep, the littlest Audi equipped with its biggest motor and the magical DSG fit the bill. At least on paper anyway. It had AWD, great handling, fabulous sport seats and interior, giant front and rear panoramic sunroofs, reasonable cargo capacity, liveable fuel mileage, and the broad, powerful torque curve of the VR6, which as a bonus also had much of the aural appeal of the old growly inline 5.
But would this really work? Could someone so touchy-feely as me actually pick out something so crucial as my next car with nothing more than some road test reports and an Excel sheet? It seemed insane. But I was about to find out.
One morning in May I walked out of the house, got into the A4 and turned the key. Nothing. I tried again. Nothing. I looked at the gauges. A full 13 volts. I try and try again, pumping the clutch pedal and playing with the remote starter and whatever else I thought might interrupt the process, but no dice. To make matters worse, I am supposed to be downtown in 30 minutes to pick up one of my vendors for a meeting at the office. I reluctantly call him and explain, then grab my motorcycle. It was time.

I begin scanning the classifieds, e-Bay, Les Pacs, you name it. Finally a silver 2006 A3 3.2 appears at Audi Prestige. Only 57,000 km, full extended warranty, and only 2.9% finance. One visit and the deal was done. I hadn’t even driven it. Now of course I had only left a deposit, along with the understanding that when the car was ready and I test drove it if I didn’t like it for any reason I didn’t like it the deal was off. But it still felt so bizarre. It was like an arranged automotive marriage.

The day came and I got in and drove.
Click.
All the right sounds, all the right moves. It’s as comfortable as any of my previous rides, handles with a surgical precision not seen since the Miata, is almost as refined as the A4, and with the addition of a Milltek exhaust and Evolution Motorsports intake sounds almost as good as the 90. The DSG is one of the seven wonders of the modern world, a true dream in traffic and capable side arm for impromptu stop-light duels.
And you can’t pry me out of it.
In a little over four months I’ve managed to put on some 16,000+ kms. During biking season, no less.
Is this The One?
Well, winter’s not here yet, so I’m still withholding full judgement on the Haldex type AWD until the snow flies.
But so far she’s in the running :)
Stay tuned…

All Fired Up

For those of you that aren't familiar with the Rendezvous long distance bike rally, before reading this year's saga you may want to start with my story on the 2009 edition, which can be found here: a4qguy.blogspot.com/2010/09/its-1130-am-on-friday-morning-september.html


A typical Saturday morning usually finds me trying to snooze in ‘til at least 8:00 am or so.
I used to be able to push that further, but like so many other stereotypes about aging, I do find myself waking up earlier and earlier as the birthdays go by.
6:00 am is a little extreme, though.
Within moments all the mental gauges are in the green, so I give up any hope of trying to nod back off and trundle downstairs, power up my computer and check out what’s new in the world.
An e-mail from Kevin. Can’t be, it’s too early. But it is. The bonus locations for the 2010 Rendezvous.
Yeeeeaaaahhhh baby!

Those of you who have followed along from my last episode on the Rendezvous, or RdV for short, know that I’ve been waiting a long time to redeem myself for my rodeo escapades and scoring table space-outs. As discussed previously, you can plan the best route in the world, but if you time it to hit traffic or don’t fill in the details ever so precisely in your scoring book, it will all be for naught.
But to even get to that point, you must indeed first hatch your Killer Route. And that means knowing what’s up for grabs.
So it was no lie to say that I lit up like a Christmas tree when I discovered that Kevin’s e-mail did contain the magical location list. This year’s version contained only three columns of data: A cryptic three or four letter code, a point value, and a map coordinate. Thankfully the coordinates were in a form that my Garmin Mapsource software readily digested, so in about 30 minutes I was able to enter all 50+ locations with the point value beside each. I then scaled back the map and looked at it the way someone does a hidden pirate treasure scroll…
“Arrrrggghh, there be gold on that there screen, matey, but ye best have yer wits about ya if yer expectin’ to find it!”
Screw you, imaginary peg leg, one look and it nearly jumped off the monitor and grabbed me.
My first thought was that it was very odd that all of the big scores – with one exception way far to the south - should be grouped in such a reasonably neat loop. It was also odd that nearly everything of consequence was located all on the U.S side of the border. In years’ past it was a pretty even split. Kevin surely must be up to something with this
I connect the dots around all the big numbers, click “directions”, and hold my breath…
950 kilometers.
12 hours.
To the minute.
Booyah!
This of course did not include any stops, but it looked like I could rack up some pretty impressive numbers by hitting only 10 or 11 places, and as I had hit 14 over the course of 1020 km the previous year I knew it was possible.
I spent the next hour trying to find some overlooked alternative to this setup, but absolutely nothing else even came close. Very suspicious. There’s got to be a catch.
I desperately wanted to call trusted pal and fellow competitor Pete and get his take on it, but he had headed off down to the states for a convertible cruise with his woman. Knowing he likes to do the polar opposite of me and hit legions of smaller, closely grouped targets, and being far more knowledgeable about every nook and cranny of the northeastern states, I was curious to see what he would make of this. But it would have to wait.
As it was still just after 7:00 am and not a soul was yet stirring, I thought I’d trying Zenning-out on the deal, so I slipped on my head phones, hit random on iTunes and sat back to contemplate my inner RdV.
Within seconds my all time favorite Pat Benetar tune appeared, a cranky little number called All Fired Up.
I sat back and let the guitar blast and Pat’s melodic voice wash over me…

Now I believe there comes a time
When everything just falls in line
We live and learn by our mistakes
The deepest cuts are healed by faith!

It is no exaggeration to say that the hair on my arms stood on end.
A sign. This is good.
Very good.
I sit back and air-drum and guitar along, knowing that the Rock Gods have blessed my route.
There can be no turning back now.

Over the course of the next few days, I keep staring at the route in both Mapsource and Streets & Trips, making sure that it still made sense, and it always did. I send some probing e-mails to Kevin to see if he’ll betray any evil secrets that would dash my plan but he was cryptic as ever, toying with me as a cat would a mouse.
I also spend a fair amount of time Google Earth-ing the bonus locations on my route to see what I might be looking for, and in no time at all evidence for Kevin’s theme for this year, Think Big, becomes readily apparent. Nearly every stop contained something of monstrous proportions, a giant globe, huge lumberjack statues, big cows, you name it. So I went ahead and programmed every bit of information I could into both the title AND comment waypoint fields of the GPS to be sure that at least something relevant would appear on the screen, unlike last year’s fiasco.
I then went so far as to perform a full blown GPS simulation run around my home town by creating a bunch of local points and a little route to hit them. Sure enough, the comment field titles appeared, and it was then that I realized that the little GPS lady in my ear would read word-for-word whatever I had put in. Such as at one point going down a particularly twisty bit when she blurted out with great affirmation in her sexy Australian tones “Big cow on right says mooooo”. I laughed so hard inside my helmet I nearly drove off the road. Good thing I hadn’t programmed anything more provocative.

When Pete finally returned from his trip, it was a wonder he could understand anything I was saying over the phone:
“OhmygodcheckoutthisrouteIgotit’slikesoincrediblykickassit’sworthlike10billionpointsandIjustKNOWitstheone…”
I didn’t bother mentioning my Pat Benetar divine intervention as Pete thinks I’m borderline insane as it is. And he should know, he’s been watching me behave like this for more than 30 years.
He agreed to look at the stuff over the next day and we would discuss the following evening.
Sure enough, he could instantly deduce two things:

1. My route was indeed quite points heavy
2. I was nuts if I thought for even a second that I could pull it off

In other words, it was perfect.
Now I just had to wait until the start. This would be the longest week ever.

After the pre-rally hell I experienced last year, I was loath to touch the bike in any way, shape or form lest I disturb its karma. But there was no avoiding the fact that the tires were completely squared and needed to be swapped. I had been running a Michelin Pilot Power 2CT front and a Pilot Road 2 rear, a popular combo for the Blackbird, but wasn’t happy with the way the Power had cupped in the front. This had never happened when I used a Pilot Road 2 front, so I decided to go back to the PR2 all-around formula.
Warning: The following contains a shameless plug for both Michelin and a local good-guy retailer. Consumer discretion is advised.
I cannot say enough about the Pilot Road 2’s. They turn in at the merest thought, offer great mid-corner adjustability, stick like glue on just about any surface and are flat-out phenomenal in the rain. And they wear like iron. Even with the tons of highway commuting I do, they only really start squaring towards the end of their life, and that’s typically 15K – 16K km in the rear and over 20K for the front, despite the heavy sport bike and a heavier right hand. I can also heartily recommend a great place for incredible pricing on virtually any brand or type of bike tire, Pete’s Superbike in Vaudreuil. I am embarrassed to say that I had just learned of this place through my friend John Thompson who lives in Guelph, despite the fact that I can nearly see the building from the back of my workplace.

With fresh rubber on and the chain adjusted and lubed, I took her out for a test ride. Mint.
Now… just don’t touch ANYTHING.
I then made a comprehensive mental list of everything I would need and packed it into my baggage days in advance. This is largely thanks to my sweetheart Brigitte’s long and painful beating into me – er, I mean training – to convince me of the merits of actually having your stuff ready more than five minutes before you have to leave. I even bought one of those really slick all-in-one tire repair kits that have all the tools, plugs and CO2 inflator cartridges, lest the worst happen to one of my fresh black donuts. Now onto the cameras.
A major change for this year was the introduction of the Photo Bonus system. Long used by other LD rallies in the states, this involves you taking a picture of your objective with either a digital or Polaroid camera rather than answering a question or bringing back physical evidence. In most ways I really liked this idea, makes it seem much less ambiguous, just snap a pic and go. But like everything else in this event, I’ve learned that the LAST thing you want to do is take anything at face value. I read and re-read the photo bonus rules over the course of the next few nights until I could practically recite them from memory. I remember reading in other rally reports that competitors would often bring a back up camera just in case, and knowing my luck this sounded like a really good idea, so I did. I charged them both up, checked to make sure they were both set to the correct time, the recommended resolution – 1600x1200 or less – and packed them away. Or at least I was sure in my mind that I had done all of the above. More on that later.
On Thursday night, I take one last look at everything, and satisfied that all is well, I head for bed.
Until I am intercepted by Brigitte.
“Where’s your key?”
“What are you talking about? It’s in my jacket pocket. C’mon…”
A firm stare is all I get back.
“OK, OK…”
I go to the closet and reach into the pocket… a familiar slim shape greets my fingertips.
All is well in the world.
I pop a sleeping pill to try and calm my brain down, which is still somewhat engaged in multiple “what if” scenarios that might pop up during the riders’ meeting, and manage to get something approaching a normal night’s rest.

Friday morning. The Day Of Reckoning.
Well, maybe not, that would really be tomorrow. But tonight is the meeting when we would discover if Kevin was really planning any evil changes to upset our well laid plans. I attach the baggage and have one last look around before heading off to work, and realize that I completely forgot about installing the new gel grips I bought earlier in the week.
Hmmm.
This only takes about 10 minutes, but if you do it wrong, the things will continuously twist and slide around all over your bars, meaning your hands will slowly turn into withered claws trying to hold the throttle and steering steady for 1000 km. But it sure would be nice to have the fresh padding on the palms tomorrow.
I then remember an old trick I read about on the Blackbird forum about using hairspray to install them. It’s greasy enough to let them stretch over the bars, but then quickly dries to glue them in place.
Being that I live with two world class coiffure prima donnas, I figure this should be an easy score. I run in the house and madly plow through the astonishing variety of products that occupy three full shelves a foot deep in our bathroom, but no joy. Figures. I toy with the idea of trying mousse, but something tells me this would be bad. I could just see the Sunday headlines …
“What happened to Ian?”
“Didn’t you catch the story in Le Journal? Says some guy on a Blackbird went through a barn near Coaticook at 250+. They suspect a throttle issue involving some kind of styling gel product…”
Not wanting to be a flattened monument for How Not To Install Your Grips, I decide on a 50-50 mixture of carpenter’s glue and spit. Yeah, I know. But let me tell you, works like a charm. Went on in seconds and haven’t budged since.
The work day comes and goes, thankfully without too much drama, and I head out for St-Jean. After a long battle with south shore traffic I grab a quick bite, meet up with the gang at the Auberge Harris .
A camera crew is here too. RDS - Quebec's TV sports network - will be filming the proceedings this year for an episode of Le Show De Moto to be aired next March. Must remember not to do anything too stupid...

While waiting for the riders meeting, we are instructed to get our cameras checked out by RdV photo guru Luc. He first checks the time setting, which turned out to be wrong by exactly an hour. Oops. When mucking about with daylight savings button I must have saved it in the wrong position. With that fixed, he snaps a pic of me. This now seals the card as “mine”. But what if I want to use my backup camera? “No problem” says Luc, “but the pictures must all be shot on this card, so make sure they use the same type!” I know for a fact they’re both SD, as I’ve swapped cards back and forth between the two cameras on different trips gone by, so I’m not worried.
The crowd is abuzz in conspiracy theories about what Kevin has in store. One I share is that the Olympic Stadium bonus currently valued at a measly 19.76 points (get it?) will be announced as really being worth 1976 points. That would be a serious game changer. But it wasn’t to be. In fact, once again he is surprisingly gentle on us, focusing more on putting us in a safety-oriented frame of mind rather than throwing any major wrenches in our plans. We get our route books and rally “flags”, individually numbered paper plates with a Christmas motif that have to appear in our photos to prove each of us was really at the claimed locations. I then ask some dumb questions, because that’s what I do at these things.

Pete and I head off to his place to digest the contents of the rally books and make sure everything is in fact what it seems. The books carry no surprises either, there are a few healthy “dual” bonuses, meaning that if you bag both locations you get an additional couple of hundred points, but none of the pairings are of help to either of us. Pete, having made no firm plans until now, decides to stick with a concentrated Vermont-New Hampshire route, with the possibility of hitting some Maine targets.
My route still stands as planned, but with one important exception; instead of starting south and running the loop counter-clockwise, I have to run it in reverse. This is because the rally book indicates that my first planned stop, a large railroad spike monument only a few kilometers south of the hotel where we start in St-Jean, can only be logged between sunrise and sunset. Because we start at 5:30 am, this means I would have to sit there for some 45 minutes to be able to grab it. But if I do it last, it’s an in-out deal. This is still a hell of a risky strategy though because it’s worth a staggering 1836 points, nearly a third of my planned total, so if I cut it too close on my arrival time I could throw it all away. Ugghh…
No choice, there is no way I can afford to blow that kind of time waiting around for the sun to come up. Having made the call, I then realize that this actually offers another advantage; I now hit highway 10 to the Eastern Townships before dawn, rather than at the end of the day. This is much better for two reasons; no traffic, important if there are lanes closed at some point (and there ALWAYS is on that damn road) and less chance of radar traps, so I can be a little looser with the right hand and hopefully get some breathing room early on. The down side is that the last leg will largely be made up of I-89 coming back up north, and slabbing-it is no fun when you’re already 9 – 10 hours into the ride. But this looks like the only way to go.
11:00 pm, off to bed. When I say I really planned ahead this year, I wasn’t kidding. I even went so far as to haul a spare mattress over to Pete’s the previous week so that I could sleep in his downstairs office in relative comfort and free from any risk of cat attack.
Despite the cushy accommodations, I awake at 3:00 am, an hour ahead of schedule. But I actually feel pretty good, so rather than try and force more rest I quietly go about gathering stuff up and getting into the combat mindset. Soon we are off for the start, and as last year we make a stop at the Timmy’s for a quick bite. We park both bikes right outside the window, sit down and eat. While we’re doing this, Pete notes some slightly suspicious kids checking out our bikes, but since we are indeed an odd sight at this early hour he doesn’t think much more about it. We climb back on and continue to the start, but at the first traffic light Pete suddenly pulls a U-turn and heads back. I’m already a few hundred meters ahead when I notice, and my first reaction is that he’s forgotten his passport or something. We’re still ahead of schedule though, so I’m not worried.
I stop to gas up, and by the time I arrive at the start Pete is already there. But he doesn’t look happy.
“What’s up?”
“MY GPS IS GONE!!!!”
It takes a second to register.
“…WHAAAAATTTT??? Are you SERIOUS?”
It looks like our shady little friends pulled a fast one while we had our backs turned. Pete had noticed that their van had circled the parking lot once before leaving, and thinks it may have passed right by the bikes at one point. I am absolutely amazed they had the balls to pull that off, as it was in the top pocket of his tank bag. I am even more surprised that they didn’t grab mine, which I had left sitting in its mount, something I virtually never do.
Pete of course is absolutely furious and has pretty much decided that he’s done, as that was the only record of his route. I try my best to calm him down and get him back in the game, because the truth is he really does have at least 90% of his route and stops more or less memorized, and a simple area map with some pencil marks on it would likely be all he needed to turn in a very good run. He knows this, but he’s just steaming over the deal, and I don’t blame him one bit. At this point fellow rider and all around good guy Perry Karsten walks in and finds out what happened. Without missing a beat he instantly offers to lend Pete one of the two GPS units off his bike (a stunning Iron-Butt-proven FJR1300 equipped like no other bike I’ve ever seen), ready to go with every single bonus location pre-programmed. All he would have to do is pick his spots, press “route” and he’d be good to go.
You have to realize that this is one of the truly great things about this event, it is a gathering of some of the best folks I’ve ever had the privilege to ride with. I had no doubt that the minute somebody heard of Pete’s situation that all manner of offers would flood in, and it took about all of 90 seconds for me to be proven right. With a little cheering on from the crowd, Pete accepts and is now back in the hunt.
Speaking of fellow competitors, one is most definitely conspicuous by his absence; Cameron Sanders. RDV’s reigning three-in-a-row champion was competing just weeks ago in the Iron Butt Association’s IB5K, a 5 day / 5,000 mile run when about half way through the event he was running on a dark back road near O’Neill Nebraska in the middle of the night and struck a Black Angus cow. Thankfully some 45 minutes later a passing motorist found him in the ditch and he was medevac’d out to a hospital in Sioux City Iowa, where they treated him for a concussion and cracked ribs. This was an incredibly sobering reminder that LD rallying is no trivial pastime; the risks are very, very real, even for someone as skilled and experienced as Cameron.
Thankfully he’s reported to be doing fine, but it won’t be the same today without him.
5:00 am
Kevin calls the morning meeting and throws out a couple of last minute wild card bonuses; get a picture of your bike with a Wal-Mart sign for 35 points, and pick up a Mr. Big chocolate bar for another 23. I’m really beginning to think he does this every year to collect the free sweets. We have yet to be asked to pick up any cans of tuna.
5:25 am
Helmet on, comm wire plugged in, key on, GPS on, thumb the starter…
While I’m waiting for the wave-out, without me touching a thing, the mp3 player in my GPS spontaneously turns on and what should come up but AC/DC’s Back In Black. I’m not kidding. Maybe the bike wants a do-over for last year? Or maybe she’s just decided this is her RdV theme song. Who am I to argue?
We’re out. I hit the bridge across the Richelieu river and let the tach stretch up towards the red to get the cobwebs out while the Yosh pipes scream backup to Brian Johnson’s lead vocal. It’s a great combo.
I back-road it from there up to highway 10 and then head east for my first stop, a double header in Coaticook. The first hour of this event still proves to be my favorite. The light of dawn breaking over the misty fields, the excitement of what the day will bring… this is what it’s all about.
Just like last year I somewhat underestimate how cold it will be – as you’ll recall I had originally planned on starting off to the south - but it’s still pretty manageable with my summer gloves and no electrics. That soon changes. By the time I’m past Magog and onto the 141 towards Coaticook, the fog starts to set in. But it’s spotty.
6:47 am
With 145 km under my belt I hit my first bonus, a big statue of a bull that we must photograph with particular attention not to miss his very impressive, um, bull bits. Done.


Eight minutes later I grab no. 2, a picture of the Coaticook pedestrian suspension bridge.

On into New Hampshire. I cross the border without a hitch, but the fog is getting real serious. Not good. By my reckoning it’s the roads ahead of me for the next two to three hours that are going to make or break me time-wise. This is because I know them to be pretty deserted at this hour and I can really run here. Later on I’ll have a lot of Interstate time, always well patrolled, and the afternoon back roads have many more small towns and will likely be pretty busy with traffic.
But within a few miles the fog gets so thick I have little more than a couple hundred feet of visibility, and a heavy film of water droplets collects on my visor that refuses to blow off. My left glove is now a full time wiper blade. It’s also starting to wick through my jacket, but so far the liner is keeping me dry, if a little frosty. I press on.
Soon the sun finally starts to break through, warming the bones and the road. I turn onto route 26 and head into the Dixville Notch. It is a biker’s dream, non-stop twisties and elevation changes on simply gorgeous asphalt of the sort we can only dream of at home. This proves to be the best riding of the day. The ‘bird is in her element and devours it at a ferocious pace.
7:50 am
Errol N.H. I arrive well ahead of schedule and actually have to wait, as the bonus here – a big white stuffed moose – is located inside the store and they don’t open ‘til 8:00. I take advantage of this by immediately buying some gas outside and getting an automated receipt with the time. If I get another one at 8:08 or later I can claim an extra bonus score for a 15 minute rest stop, and it will have only really cost me half that as I’m stuck here waiting anyway. While I go about my business I see a familiar looking BMW GS arrive. Michael Del Brocco appears to be running the same route as me. And this guy looks like he knows what he’s doing.
By 8:10 I’ve bagged my rest bonus, the moose, and am out.

8:57 am
I’ve covered another 80 kilometers to arrive at the Rumford visitor center in Maine. Answer the question on the statue and as I leave the attendant says a guy was just here doing the same thing. I think I know who. Sure enough, while later navigating the city streets of Auburn I catch up to him and we ride in tandem for a while. Not long after getting out of the town, we hit a closed road. Oh-oh. But the GPS takes it in stride, I simply hit the detour button and it re-routes me around the closure. Michael and I split up, but it won’t be long before we meet again…
I hook up onto I-295 and head south to my next stop, the Delorme map store in Yarmouth Maine, just up the road from Portland. It’s screamingly obvious what the attraction here is. Inside the massive glass storefront is the world’s largest globe, “Eartha”. Weighing in at nearly three tons and measuring some 41 feet in diameter, it is actually larger than the house I live in. And yes, it spins. I need a shot of Florida, and actually have to run for some time to find it, checking off the continents as I go.
As I grab my pic, Michael jogs in. This is going to be the guy to beat today, me thinks.
While contemplating this, I suddenly notice something alarming. My camera is flashing “low battery”.
Huh???
I am SURE I charged this thing. But there was no way of knowing the battery state as the little Canon has no meter. It just tells you when it’s about to expire.
But no worries, I’ve got back up, right? And I KNOW I’ve charged both batteries for my bigger Lumix, ‘cause the meter on that one said so. I decide that I’ll keep shooting with the little one ‘til it dies, then switch. Clock says 10:12. Keep moving.
I now have a long haul ahead of me; the next stop is Tilton N.H., some 260 km away. The choice of route here was agonizing, because both Streets & Trips and Mapsource seemed to waffle between taking the back roads, a good 60 km shorter, or going the long way round on the interstate. The times were identical. The slab was probably less risky, but much less fun. And since when do I take the easy way out? Back roads it was.
Boy did I regret that.
The traffic was horrible. Never ending lines of cars on town-to-town shopping expeditions, and the populated areas were much denser than I expected. My only saving grace was that the ‘bird excelled at blasting past these long parades when the opportunities did present themselves in the boonies, keeping us relatively on time. At least this stretch of consumer hell bears one gift, a Wal-Mart store. Park bike in front of sign. Click. There’s an easy 35 points.

12:17 pm
I reach the Tilton Arch. This has got to be the oddest thing on my route. Village namesake Charles Tilton apparently decided that what this rural New Hampshire town was missing is a 50 foot tall solid granite Roman-style archway, which he proceeded to have built on top of a hill smack in the middle of nowhere.

I grab my pic from the parking lot as instructed, and finally allow myself five minutes to guzzle down my RDV food of choice, liquid egg white. This year I’ve added cocoa powder and Splenda, so it’s muuuuch tastier.
A shot of water to chase it, peel off my jacket liner as it’s actually getting warm, and I’m on my way.
1:26 pm
Littleton N.H. I’m now nearly 700 km into my run and starting to feel it. But so far things are going exceptionally well, the weather’s gorgeous, I’m still ahead of schedule and haven’t missed a beat.
The stop here is at Chutter’s General Store, whose claim to fame is the world’s longest candy counter. I am to go in and ask for something called a Rendezvous Special. The girls inside obviously are in on this and I’m back out the door with my dollar bag of sweets, once again to be handed over to you-know-who at the finish. I hope Kevin has a good dental plan.
For the next little while the bonuses begin to pile up, only some 50 km apart or less, which starts to seriously eat into my schedule. But that’s fine, as according to my ever-aggressive Zumo GPS I started the event with some two hours of stop time available, and what little I’ve used until now has largely been won back on route. So I can now afford to blow a good 5 to 10 minutes per visit and not sweat it.
In fact I even decide to make another stop that I previously thought not worth it, a 50-pointer just off the highway in St-Johnsbury VT to snap a pic of a giant maple syrup can. Too easy.

2:16 pm
Cabot Creamery, count the stuffed cows beside the tractor… Check.
3:00 pm
Middlesex Center Cemetery. Find the tombstone in the shape of a clothespin, of all things, and snap a pic. This wasn’t so easy, I blew at least ten minutes both on foot and on bike circling around trying to spot this thing. At 196 points it would have been a real bummer to miss. But I finally bag it.

I’m now starting to watch the clock closely. I previously thought I could throw a few more stops on the heap, but it’s quickly becoming apparent that wouldn’t be wise. Stick to the plan.
3:16 pm
Last stop in America, the Ben and Jerry’s factory. Get a pic of the large ice cream container. No problem there, but as I back up to take the shot, a fast moving toddler makes a run for my numbered dinner plate that’s propped up against the container. Thankfully a watchful parent outruns him and intercepts, otherwise who knows how far I would have had to chase this kid in boots and full gear.

I now have exactly two hours to get back to St-Jean, snap a pic of the big spike and hit the finish.
Should be just fine.
I calculate that I have about a 20 - 25 minute window to get held up at the border if need be, hopefully that will be enough. And it was, only needed about 10. I thus decide that I’ll add one more stop, it’s only a measly 35 points, but I’m going to drive right past it, so what the hell.
I thus stop at Le Géant Antique to take a picture of, you guessed it, Le Géant.
Amazingly my little Canon has still been going strong, so I decide to take an extra shot of the big guy.
Hmmm, still doesn’t look quite right, let’s try one more…
Silence, then a black screen.
Okay, this isn’t a problem, dig out my backup camera, plug in the card, turn it on and…
“CARD READ ERROR”.
What?
Turn it off. Turn it back on.
“CARD READ ERROR”.
You must be kidding.
Take the card out. Put it back in. Bang the camera against my hand.
“CARD READ ERROR”.
Oh no.
This is bad. Catastrophically bad.
I feel the blood drain from my face. I have no idea why this is happening. I’ve used this card in this camera before. Many times.
If I can’t get a shot of the big spike, I’m screwed. Kiss 1836 points goodbye.
Instantly my brain begins to race… what if you try the Canon one more time when you get there, maybe the 30 minute rest from here to there will allow the battery to recover just enough to get you one shot. In fact, I suspect that’s what’s allowed it to last this long; I’ve never seen it take so many pics after the warning showed. But it’s probably good and dead now.
Maybe I can pull some 12V wire off the bike’s harness and give the battery a quick blast, just a few seconds ought to be enough to shock it into giving one more shot.
No time to debate this, my arrival window closes in just over a half hour. Gotta go and just hope that some divine inspiration hits along the way.
As I blast down the 133 towards St-Jean, I start singing Pat’s song in my head…

Now I believe there comes a time
When everything just falls in line
We live and learn from our mistakes
THE DEEPEST CUTS ARE HEALED BY FAITH!!

Believe sonny, believe.
Sure enough, as I pull into the parking lot the answer hits me.
There are a ton of other riders that will surely be trying to grab this huge prize before they head in.
They all have cameras. And the SD card is the most common type.
SURELY someone will be kind enough to lend me theirs for 30 seconds?
And I sure am right.
As soon as I pull into the parking lot of the big spike location, I spot a fellow rider packing up to leave.
He has a SD card camera, and no prob, I can borrow it.
I swap cards and race over to the spike, snap three quick shots and hand it back to him. And yes, I did take my card back.

Unfortunately I am way too stressed out to ask for his name, and with the helmet on I can’t see enough of a face for a positive ID, so I didn’t get the chance to later thank him.
(Author’s note: After reading this report, Kevin informs me that the gentleman responsible for this kind act is Alan Archibald from Nova Scotia. Alan, beers’ are definitely on me in 2011!!!)
5:12 pm
I cross the finish line, with more than ten minutes to spare. After my last two finishes, it feels like an hour. Brigitte is there to greet me, I exhale and give her the Reader’s Digest version of my day. Now it’s off to the last frontier, filling out my route book and… the Scoring Table.

This is where it really counts. As I have well proven in the past, no matter how fried your mind and body are from the day-long ride, you really need to sit down, suck it up and focus here. I carefully lay out all my stuff; route book, receipts, strange things picked up along the way, and get to work. I transcribe every bit of info into the rally book with steely precision, times, distances, answers. I re-read it all twice. Looks good. I’m about to wrap it all up when something tells me I should read it again, and yes, I still manage to make some small additions. One more read.
I think I got it.
I put everything in the envelope supplied and hand it over to Guylaine, who will bring it to the scoring room, and Luc gets my SD card for examination and downloading. He sees the two different camera file types.
“You had to use the backup camera?”
“Uh, yeah” I say, not wanting to complicate my story any more than necessary. They said I could use a different camera, right? Did it matter if it was mine? I can’t imagine what possible difference it could make, but I’m way too paranoid at this stage to think straight.
Onto The Interminable Wait.
I must now stand guard until the judges are ready to interview me. Yes, part of the process is you have to sit down one-on-one with a scoring judge and jointly examine the contents of your envelope. This way it’s clear what you did and didn’t do right, and any disputes that crop up can be rectified by the Rallymaster (Kevin) on the spot and a final tally sorted out. After about an hour I finally get called in. Breathe, breathe…
My route book is pulled out, my image file gets loaded, and judge Shelley examines it all to make sure the times, images, mileages and answers carefully correspond. Each time a new picture comes up on the screen, she stares at it with an intensity befitting a CIA photo interpreter at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis. I sit, frozen like a deer in the headlights, waiting… but one by one she circles the points. Circles are good. I can’t believe it.
Nothing left on the table.
I nearly pass out.

The evening moves into banquet mode, stories fly around the tables, and scores are hinted at. My number, 6328, sounds like it’s a decent one. But as I look about the place I know there are a number of much better equipped and more experienced riders here, so I can’t really be sure where I stand. I secretly hope for somewhere in the top 5. That would be good.
Oh who am I fooling… what I really want is a podium spot. Just once.
Gotta wait.
9:00 pm comes and goes, and still no scores.
Sometime between the main course and dessert, Kevin emerges from the scoring room.
Is this it?
No, he needs to talk to someone.
Me.
All eyes are on us as I follow him back to his scoring lair.
This can’t be good.
Once in the room, he points to two laptop monitors. One displays my picture of the Tilton Arch, the other is an overhead satellite image of the same area. He asks me to look at the overhead picture and point to the spot on the ground where I was standing when I took my shot.
This is because my photo doesn’t really show the precise location from where my image was taken, as the arch was so far away I had to play with the zoom to get both it and my numbered plate into focus.
“Here”… as I point to a spot along the fence in the middle of the gravel parking lot.
To my eye, the angle of the arch clearly matches up when looked at in either perspective.
But Kevin remains poker-faced, thanks me, and sends me on my way.
I can’t take this anymore.
10:00 pm.
We head off to a conference room to settle in and listen to a presentation given by Peter Delean about his IB5K ride with fellow RdV’ers Cameron, Perry, Jacques and Jennyfer. I let myself get taken away in his very detailed Power Point, which nicely illustrates the long and intense process of planning, preparing and finally competing in a 5000 mile event.
But only minutes into it, someone appears in the doorway.
It’s Kevin. He asks if we would mind an interruption to announce the scoring. Eyes wide, we all just nod.
Because of the large number of participants this year he won’t be able to announce anything more than the top five spots tonight, the rest will be published online later in the week.
I sit back and hold my breath.
First, a special award to the top scoring couple of Willy and Sandy Pichler. Yes, you read that right, there was not one but two rider-and-passenger couples who ran this year’s event. Talk about commitment. If your relationship can survive 12 hours of this nonsense, then you’re definitely good for the long haul.
Now we’re down to the nitty gritty.
In fourth place, a tie, the two bike team of Jacques and Jennyfer.
Third goes to Michael Del Brocco – I knew he’d be up there!
Second is Perry Karsten. Who says nice guys finish last?
But does that mean?....

Yup.

I just about fell out of the chair.
Incredible.
How I managed to pull that off, with the amount of talent surrounding me in that room, amazes me.
And as I sit here a week later typing this, I look at the plaque and still wonder.
Truth be told, I can’t really claim this as mine, since Cameron wasn’t there I feel a little like one of those seat-filler people at the Oscars.
But you know, I’ll gladly take the gig.

A big thanks once again to KC and the Rendezvous Band for putting on a truly superb event.



For more details, pics, stories and upcoming events be sure to visit the RdV site:

http://www.rendezvousld.org/
(Note: site is temporarily down until Oct. 1st)

Keep an eye out next March for us at:

http://www.leshowdemoto.tv/

The best deals in Canada on bike tires:

http://www.petes-superbike.com/

For anything you ever wanted to know about my ride:

www.cbrxx.com