Waiting for that precious e-mail that would unlock, at least to a reasonable degree, the secrets of where I would be headed once again in that quest of questionable sanity, the Rendezvous long distance bike rally.
It's no exaggeration to say that this really is one of the biggest things I look forward to every year.
I'm very fortunate in that my work does occasionally bring wonderful experiences, like the odd trip to Asia or the chance to beat the snot out of some semi-exotic cars around an abandoned airfield à la Top Gear, but these things tend to crop up on an unpredictable schedule at best.
So other than a couple of great winter car rallies, the only thing I count on annually with absolute certainty to quench my thirst for real adventure is ye olde RDV.
Why is this?
It's not like I couldn't plan to do something equally nutty of my own volition if the mood struck.
It's a free country (last I checked anyway), gas is still almost affordable.
But there is something in the recipe of an event like this that multiplies the enjoyment by an order of magnitude over just striking out on one's own to cover 1000+ km in a day.
Obviously the fact that it's competitive is one thing. Knowing that you're working the clock against 40 odd other riders definitely keeps the adrenaline flowing.
There's the riding itself, which often takes you down stellar, twisty roads into places of breathtaking beauty, some you've never seen, and maybe wouldn't even have thought to explore.
There's the treasure hunt aspect where you have to find your objective at each stop, which appeals greatly to one's inner 7 year old - and he takes up gigs of space on my personal C drive.
Then you have the Unknowns.
What will the weather do?
Will all the roads I need be open?
Traffic?
How long will I wait at the borders?
These lurk like twists and turn in a good thriller; the prospect of dealing with each one scares and excites you all at once.
Still, there's something beyond the sum of the parts which I can't explain.
When Kevin's e-mail did arrive, there was nothing like last year's epiphany.
No Rainman flash when I just saw all the bonus locations form up into a perfect pattern before my eyes. This year I was gonna have to work for it.
I spent HOURS staring at that screen. No hard truths found. By the next day I eventually came to the conclusion that there was a pretty decent route to be had, but I was in no way confident that it was THE route. Loosely speaking it was quite similar to what I had done the year before, a blast down to Magog, then a big loop out heading east along the Atlantic coast, then south and eventually west to Manchester NH, on down to the bottom of Vermont and then straight back up to St-Jean.
The only thing was whether I could pull it off.
In previous years my routes had all come in at around 950 – 1050 km, which had proven to be pretty reasonable for the 11.5 hours allotted. That being if I kept my list to15 stops or less and wasted no time when off the bike. This year was going to be a wee bit different.
The route I had in mind had only 10 stops, but it was 1150 km.
Yep, that's right, do the math.
I had to average 100 km/h.
All the time.
If I didn't stop.
Luckily the vast majority of my route was either autoroute (as we call them here in Quebec) or interstate, where one could clock 120 – 125 km/h all day long and never bother anyone or raise the ire of the local constabulary. So it did seem technically possible. To boot, the big points came from the first 8 stops (around 58,000+) so if I ditched the last two measly 1000 pointers I'd cut my usual stop count in half. Using my rule of thumb that each stop costs around 5 minutes (half of the recommended time, but I've pretty much got them down to a science now) I figured that this would give me at least another 40 to 45 minutes in the bank.
It all then seemed, as the Mythbusters would say, “Plausible”.
Just the same, I decided that I would cook up a “B” route that shortened the second half of my run by around 100 km, putting me back into known territory should things go pear shaped at some point.
It would still potentially generate a decent 50,000 or so points, but give me an extra hour to make it back.
The only other thing that lent confidence to my choices was the fact that the whole of New England had been absolutely battered by fierce rain storms leftover from hurricane Irene the previous week, and there were so many small road and bridge closures on the various state websites that they were hard to count. That my route relied on so few of these back roads would at least be a very tangible plus.
Since my GPS maps were getting pretty out of date, I decided that it was time to splurge and sign up for Garmin's Lifetime Map Update service. No more worries about not having the latest info, just download and go.
Or so I thought.
Many of you more experienced LD riders reading this are already shaking your heads. You just know what lies ahead.
“He's updating his maps days before an event??”
“Has he GONE MAD?!?!?!”
No. I just live in a world where for the most part you download updates for stuff, install them, and they work. It seems a pretty simple concept. Save that this idea has somehow escaped the good folks at Garmin.
First of all the download and installation is measured not in minutes, but in hours.
I cannot possibly imagine what this would have been like back in the days of dial-up.
You'd be out of commission for weeks.
Nevertheless, I finally manage to get the thing up and running. The next day I program a simple route to the office to try it out, and as soon as I hit “Go” there are issues.
“Route plotted on earlier map version. Recalculating.”
So I wait. And wait. And wait. Finally, after around 10
minutes, it figures out where I want to go.I shut it off and try it again.
Same story.
This is not good. If I have to wait 10 minutes to get my route back every time the thing shuts off, I'm screwed.
A phone call to Garmin that evening ensues.
After about 20 minutes on hold, I finally talk to a human and explain my plight. One thing I will say is that the fellow I eventually got to talk to was incredibly helpful and had the patience of Job. He was not getting off the line 'till we sorted this. After a long session of remote diagnosis, file updating and all sorts of other stuff, he finally discovers that when I downloaded the updates I had not selected “update GPS AND computer”. Thus my two devices were no longer seeing the same maps. In my defence, the fellow pointed out that the place where this choice is made is rather cryptic, when he showed me where it appears in the update process I didn’t even recall seeing it. They really need to have a word with Microsoft. Say what you want about Vista and its damn pop-ups, when you ask it to do something you sure as hell know what it is you're asking for and if it REALLY is OK.
After spending no less than an hour and twenty minutes on the phone with me, we finally get it sorted.
24 hours to go.
Check-in now seems like an old habit, no stress, just lots of friendly faces and great stories to swap.
This year I was extremely pleased that my long-time friend Dave Toomey had decided to join the fun. Dave was at first somewhat concerned that this wasn't the kind of thing that one does with his sort of bike, a Harley Night Train. But damned if he didn't show up hell bent for leather. His objective was to at least be the top scoring H-D guy, and knowing that he's nothing if not crazy enough to pull it off I thought he had an excellent shot at it. Of course Mr. Schaefer was back on his trusty FZ-1, new GPS in hand, and many more of the regulars as well as new folks could be seen milling all about.
Everyone chats, but few reveal their intentions.
Kevin's meeting reveals no big surprises (phew). The theme this year is Planes, Trains and Automobiles, and sure enough a glance through the route book shows that tomorrow's ride will be a quest for all manner of these things.
Pete and I head back to his place nearby, put the final touches on our routes, pack and get some shut-eye.
I arrive a little on the tardy side to the start in St-Jean (for reasons that escape me now) but just in time to catch the start of the riders meeting. Again, no big surprises, just the way I like it. One last minute Wildcard bonus that will hopefully prove to be fun: We can collect a coupla thousand extra points if we bag a photo of a “woody”, which is any kind of vehicle that has wood panelling. Think classic surf-mobile, or those tacky big 70's wagons.
Out on the start line I cue up my theme music for this year, the Foo Fighters outstanding new album Wasting Light. With the route I have going that title will serve as a constant reminder that I seriously can't afford to.
5:30 am
The clock starts.
Dave and the boys are cranking it out in my helmet, I let the Birdie loose and head for my fist stop, a monument for the cog railway system at Mount Washington in New Hampshire. The fact that this is nearly three hours away on a rally that only lasts eleven and a half sort of lends a sense of scale to my route. And it is not necessarily a comforting one. Still, I've managed to make this gig work before. Have to have faith that I can do it again.
The first “real” stop however is at the border on autoroute 55 near Magog. Here I am surprised to already see a number of riders in the line ahead of me. That there is in fact a line at all is a little more worrisome, but thankfully it moves quickly and it looks like I'll be through in 10 minutes or so. While waiting I see a friendly face ambling over, RDV and Iron Butt veteran Jacques Titolo. We chat for a bit and he tries to get a feel for what I have planned. I give him a basic outline of my route and he does likewise.
“What do you figure” he asks, “sixty, sixty-five?”
“Yeah.”
“Hmmm, sounds about like what’s going around…”
Gulp.
Obviously there is no turning back, I HAVE to get the big route done if I'm going to have a shot at the podium.
Damn.
Once through the border I let 'er rip.
The upper sections of Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire are definitely on my all time fave list of places to ride. No matter where you go there are miles and miles of spectacular roads just begging to be autographed with one’s foot pegs. This morning will find me signing my fair share.
8:26
I make it to Mt. Washington slightly ahead of schedule and snap a pic of the monument.
Damn.
For a moment I contemplate trying to slide the bike between the concrete blocks barring passage, but Lord only knows what awaits up the road, and if you've ever ridden/driven this one you will know it is NOT for the faint of heart (In my case I actually did for the first time on the 2012 Minuteman 1000, but that's the another story). The 'bird is great at many things, but handling muddy washouts while trying to climb and descent 20%+ grades is not one of them.
I relent and go to the backup plan, the 3 and the 115, which
will add some 23 km to my route. But
thankfully these two roads are big, smooth, fast and absolutely devoid of
traffic, and I did recall that back in the planning stages that the difference
in time wasn't nearly as bad as you'd think, owing to the very slow average the
over-the-mountain route demanded. Indeed, I actually did arrive on the other side in Gorham
only a few minutes behind.
9:07
Grab a pic of the plow train car (always loved seeing those things when I was a kid) and I'm gone.
Off now to Auburn ME, which involves a fairly clean 100 km run along the 2 and the 26.
10:04
On the way there, somewhere around West Minot if memory
serves, I ride by a nice collection of Ford Model T's gathered in a small park. Just as I reach my next turn a few hundred yards away, a
light bulb goes on. Aren't the truck body versions of those things made out of
wood?? I race back, haul off the bike and start snapping at one of
the panel van T's like a mad fool.
I even take a close-up shot of the inside to show the grainy
wood texture, as the thing has been painted inside and out, so I need some kind
of proof as to its true organic nature.I cannot imagine what the crowd is thinking, juxtaposed
against this scene in my black space suit and helmet, wires dangling, the 'bird
and I must look like we just landed from another world.Store camera, get out.
10:24
Lewiston-Auburn railroad bridge plaque, check.
Next stop, Manchester NH.
Pretty much a 150 km straight shot down I-95 along the coast
then another 50 km west on the 101. This is where I need to reel in some clock.
Unfortunately I had not thought to get one of those handy-dandy toll
transponder devices in time, so I will have to stop and pay at every one along
the way. I am NOT coming here again without one. But other than that, the big
I-road made piling on the mileage a mindlessly simple task.
12:24
Lots of traffic lights and side streets meant a big time-sink
to get this one, but the “Merci” box car was worth no less than 14,000 points
and as such was the grand prize on my route. Historical side note: Who knew
that the French sent 50 train cars full of stuff to the U.S. after WWII as a
thank you for their liberation? Amazing what you learn on one of Kevin’s gigs.
Here however was where a very fateful decision had to be
made. Do I play safe and keep it short with the 1050 km plan B
route, or go for broke and really do the 1150? With Jacques' numbers still rattling around in my ears I have
no choice, it's Go Big or Go home.
Having resolved myself to such a fate, I now had to contend
with Vermont's Route 9, which is a fairly open affair but has limited legal
passing zones and can be quite congested at times. This part would literally
make or break my whole run. The only thing working for me here was the
Blackbird's incredible ability to quickly and safely pass long strings of
traffic in a single twist of the wrist.
It would indeed prove to be a monumental asset for the next
hour and a half.The upcoming target on my list was a plaque at the Vermont welcome center situated on I-91 just north of the Massachusetts state line. The tricky part here was that it is only accessible from the northbound lanes. I would be heading south. Meaning I would have to go some 12 km past it to the next exit, turn around, and run 12 km back to get into it.
There clearly would be no time for that. However back in the planning stages thanks to the wonders of Google Earth I spotted a magnificent loophole... right beside the northbound off-ramp to the visitor’s center there was a U-turn lane that connected both sides of the highway. Okay, um, technically a bit sketchy but hey, what if I was experiencing a bathroom emergency? At that point I would have been on the bike for almost nine hours. Little exaggeration would likely be required. This little move however was the one that actually made the whole deal possible, and at 9100 points this would be my second highest scoring stop.
As I approached the area I adjusted my speed and position to make sure I was in a nice traffic-free zone in every direction. Spotted the lane, grabbed the binders, scooted across, and voilà, one Vermont rest stop bagged.
1:47Time to head for home.
Well, relatively speaking. With less than three and a half hours left on the clock and about that much time required to cover the 370 km back to the finish in St-Jean, I would be hard pressed to make any more stops. Still, there were at least two I was going to try for, and with a combined value of 9500 points they were big enough that I felt it worth risking using up some of the 30 minute late window penalty to get them. But if I used up ALL 30 minutes it would be game over, DNF. I got on the 91 and hauled it.
2:49
What with it being pure interstate, I thought I would have made this 116 km leg in under an hour, but a gas stop that should have taken 5 minutes turned into a 12 minute disaster when the station just off the highway that the GPS routed me to turned out to be abandoned. I had to schlep way off route to find another, running on the proverbial fumes. Not pleased. I made back what I could on the road and luckily this next stop was only a bit more than 1 km off the highway. I grabbed a quick pic of the train in Hartford VT and ran. One more to go...
Another 90 km stretch of interstate and I'm off at Berlin
Corners to find a plane-shaped tombstone in a cemetery. This one is a little
ways off the highway so I have to soft-shoe it agonizingly through the town for
a while, but at 4500 points it is indeed too lucrative to pass up.
3:34I really am out of time.
Unfortunately my calculations show I'll be around 50 km short on fuel to make the finish, so one more gas station it is... at least they're right here in front of me. With credit card ready and no tank bag to deal with a half tank top-up adds barely a minute to my ETA. Nice. Get back on the slab and punch it.
This is it. The home stretch. It all comes down to what happens in the next hour and a half.
In that time I have to cover 186 km AND cross a border.
As Elwood once famously said...
“Our Lady of Blessed Acceleration, don't fail me now”.
Along the way I start to collect fellow RDV'ers. Pretty much all looking as intense as I feel. Lo and behold, there's Jacques and Jennyfer! Nice to have my Blackbird sister in the fray, hopefully a good omen from the XX gods. We all cruise along at a pretty good clip up the 89 but carefully temper our pace in the urban areas like Burlington where the radar is thick on both sides of the town. All escape unscathed. By the time we approach the border there are at least six of us swapping spots and working the traffic as best we could.
The border was indeed a great source of stress for me, the last big potential time-sink and for some reason I just had a bad feeling today that it was gonna be rockin. I had put a call in to Brigitte earlier in the day to ask her to keep an eye on the wait times on their website, and from her first call a while back it had been ten minutes.
Not bad, I can live with that.
About a half hour out she called again to say it just hit twenty.
Uh-oh.
That's cutting it REAL close.
What I didn't know was that shortly afterwards, it hit thirty.
She didn't have the nerve to call me, knowing I'd freak out.
Smart girl.
As we slowed for the station at Saint-Armand/Philipsburg, my jaw dropped. There had to be at least 20 cars in front of us in each of the two lanes open. Not good.
I knew instantly this meant penalty points, but how bad I wasn't sure.
I just hoped I would make it before that 30 minute grace period shut.
We all grouped together and watched with grave concern. Jacques and Jennyfer were in a tighter spot, they were running about eight minutes later than I was so their margin of error was even slimmer.
We wait.
The line crawls.
Suddenly we spot something.
A guard. He's walking across the gates. Headed for an empty booth.
C'mon dude... be openin’ that thang!
He gets in.
YEAH BABY!
Not even waiting for the light to come on, we all simultaneous thumb the starter buttons and race for the third gate before any of the cars even realize what's happening.
I let Jacques, Jennyfer and one other gentleman who's badly time-strapped go in ahead of me.
Thankfully minutes later I'm through too, and in no time our group is gathered back together on the 133 making serious tracks for St-Jean.
The GPS clock is counting down.
I'm going to be two minutes late.
One minute late.
Back on time.
Then a minute early, yes, that’s it, keep going.
Until we see...
The road closes to a single one-way lane for construction.
There's a red light.
And about twenty cars, trucks, buses, you name it, in front of us.
You can see the brutal despair right through everyone's visors.
As the countdown clock quickly goes negative again, I see two of our bikes heading up the shoulder.
Once at the head of the line, they signal to the driver of the first car, and appear to be explaining our predicament. Fantastic!! They get the nod, and I'm now right behind them as is the rest of the group.
When the light goes green our Good Samaritan waves us off while holding back the line, saving us from sure penalty points if not outright DNF.
We now have the road to ourselves, and it is glorious.
All six bikes howl along the 133 unimpeded, and just when we start to hit some traffic in the final stretch we arrive at the dual lane section.
We're home free.
I don't actually recall what my clock said at the finish, but I did indeed have minutes to spare, and even Jacques and Jennyfer managed to make their window, albeit by seconds.
Of course it feels great to have actually pulled off such a tightly timed ride, but my work is far from done. I had to get in there now and make sure it all counted. That meant filling in the route book perfectly, making sure to dot the i's, cross the t's... like to a degree NASA doesn't even require.
Thankfully Kevin's school of Hard Rally Knocks has beaten me with enough tough love for the last few years that I now don't sweat this so much.
I just remember my 11 simple rules.
1. Read EVERY question to be answered three times.
2. Then read them again.
3. Then, and ONLY THEN, fill in your answers.
4. Write EVERYTHING exactly as it should be spelt, spaced, you name it, including upper case and lower case letters.
5. Write your number, mileage and time on EVERYTHING.
6. Layout all your receipts, merchandise, whatever you have to submit, on the table and stare at it long and hard. For like a good 5 minutes.
7. Make sure it's ALL there.
8. Check your camera images VERY CAREFULLY. Make sure they are all there, and that there are no more than the rules allow, before submitting your memory card.
9. Before closing up your envelope, make sure you have anything else handy that the scoring book says will be required for scoring (see rule 11).
10. Check AGAIN that EVERYTHING is identified, then wrap it all up, hand it in, and pray.
11. When called to the scoring table – if required in the score book - put on the funny hat, sing Pavarotti, wear a live weasel as a stole. Possibly all simultaneously. Just do WHATEVER the hell it says!!!!
And so I did.
Fortunately I was not required to sing or wear a dangerous rodent, but as I was one of the very last people to submit my stuff – largely due to strict observance of the above rules – this meant I had to spend an agonizing amount of time waiting to be called for judgment. This pain however was mitigated by getting to hang out with Pete and Dave and hearing how their rides went. Dave got a really solid ride in, seemed to enjoy himself immensely and would later find out he managed to pull off a very respectable 15th out of 40. Pete had planned what was probably his most ambitious ride ever, but when he started to realize the magnitude of the thing he decided to reel it in and take it easy. Despite coming back several hours early he still picked up great points, enough it would turn out make the Top 10.
But where would I wind up?
Eventually I got my turn at the table, and as always I held my breath.
One by one my loot was scrutinized… but it all got passed!
Something about my “woody” Model T would have to go to Kevin for the final call, but all the big numbers got posted. Meaning I should get around 62,000 points.
It sounded good.
But was that enough??
Dinner came and went, then finally the moment of truth.
The scores got called out. Owing to the large numbers of competitors and the complexities of verifying everything 100%, Kevin could only announce the top five.
But they are really tight.
And all in the forties.
This isn't possible. Where were all the sixty thou’s?
Damn that Jacques… a perfect psych out!!
When they finally called out Perry Karsten – a disarmingly laid back but razor sharp IBR veteran with whom I have finished neck-and-neck for the last two years – in second with 48,463, I just about fell out of my chair.
Kevin then called me up, whence upon I do believe he referred to me as “you madman”.
He did take pride in knocking off some 4000 odd points, probably my debatable woody, not sure what else, but that still left me with some 58,685 as a total.
A score I could definitely live with.
In all seriousness I was convinced that someone was gonna have a better route. At no point was I really sure I'd make the podium, especially with the amazing range of talent that this event now attracts.
(Note: I found out much later that another hardcore IBR veteran who was with us that day – Wallace French – had a score going right up there in this range, but due to a mechanical problem in the last leg of his run he DNF’d. Proof that the LD gods can certainly be a cruel lot).
The only downside to the whole affair was to come days after the event.
I got a call from Kevin. He wanted to meet. To discuss “stuff”.
Uh-oh. This can't be good.
So I joined him for dinner one evening, and he asks just what I was willing to do to achieve the score that I did. It turns out that several folks were “concerned” about the distance I had covered, and what that meant in terms of riding dynamics.
I had two very distinct reactions to this.
One was first and foremost great worry that I had somehow done something that could cast Kevin’s fantastic event in a bad light. This was really upsetting, as the one thing I take to heart when I head out on those early September mornings is that I am indeed an ambassador for not only this event but our sport in general. I cannot bear the thought that this would be seen as otherwise.
But as I made it very clear to Kevin, my ability to cover that distance in that time was overwhelmingly predicated on that fact that everything had to work perfectly, that I had only 8 stops and spent no more that 5 minutes at each. And save for a bit of a wait at the border, a few extra minutes for one gas stop and a minor re-route, it did pretty much all work exactly as planned. Not to mention more than 70% of my route was Interstates, which we all know are engineered for speeds far beyond the posted limit, and where on a few occasions I was the one getting passed! If had anything really gone awry I could easily have switched to plan B, bought myself an hour, and still turned in a respectable (in this case even winning) total.
I could only hope that my conduct over the last four years would reflect that I do take this VERY seriously, not just for myself but for the sake of everyone involved as well as all whom I share the road with.
Kevin seemed perfectly pleased with this answer. He was pretty sure that was the case, but stickler for details that he is he wanted to hear my side of the story straight from the source.
My second reaction was something more akin to, um, irritation, to be polite, and to be clear this part had nothing to do with Kevin and everything to do with those that were pointing fingers.
I realize that I'm still a noob at the LD game, but I have been riding bikes for over twenty years and my safety and behaviour record is pretty damn good. While I certainly don't consider myself in the same league as the folks who compete in the 11 day Iron Butt, I do know now that I can confidently and safely maintain a similar pace for at least 12 hours. And in fact from what I've seen from the IBR results in recent years, my 2011 RDV time/distance log seems rather tame.
The game is what it is. At the end of the day we have to each make the call as to what’s possible and sensible for ourselves. It’s without question a great quality that we all keep a collective eye out to make sure the sport is kept safe. But please… don’t go judging others before you have the facts!
As always, a HUGE thanks goes out to Kevin and team RDV for another spectacularly good event.
A better organized or more enjoyable affair with this calibre of camaraderie you would be hard pressed to find anywhere.
Can’t wait to see what the 2012 edition has in store!
And oh yeah… could someone else PLEASE take the “madman” category this time?
(Wallace this means you. I’d say Perry, but with that Boy Scout demeanor it’d never stick).
