Fri 9/23/2016 (Still Prologue…)
Barton VT to …um Newport VT
~ 15 miles
I had (hopefully) learned my lesson from sleeping late during the Minuteman rally earlier this year (when I completely missed the ending breakfast and awards), by purchasing a Screamin Meanie alarm device – 120 decibels of beeping pain requiring the press of 3 buttons simultaneously to shut off. Rather than wake the entire hotel (if indeed there were any other guests that night), I set my cell alarm to go off minutes prior to the Meanie. This worked out fine and I got up on time, put on the coffee and eagerly stared at my laptop awaiting the release of the optional bonus list at 06:15.
Although the forecasts for the next few days over the weekend predicted clear weather across the northeastern US, there was firstly a front of storms moving through that was just passing overhead that morning, meaning a wet start to the ride. I figured I’d be out in the clear by mid-day or so, traveling west.
Never having crossed the border into Canada before, I was particularly concerned about that requirement of my triangle, since one of the mandatory corners was in Ontario. Canada was a big unknown for me, adding to the excitement and stress of this event. Though I’d read articles online and gotten lots of good advice on the rally email list from other riders, I didn’t truly know what to expect when and IF they let me through the border. What if I looked too shifty-eyed or drew suspicion due to the extra lights and thermos hydration system mounted on the bike? Why the hell should they let me in a whole ‘nother country just to ride around and re-enter my own further to the west? I knew radar detectors weren’t allowed and so didn’t bring mine for the rally, having heard stories of them being confiscated during traffic stops. What kind of place would this be with people driving along politely at max speeds of 60 mph on the freeways?
I would have to cross the border somewhere, but it would be dictated by my routing plan to get the optional bonuses. I’d researched all the crossings in VT and NY in advance, just to have some idea of the traffic volume and possible wait times I might face, based on time off day. I purposely planned my triangle direction counter-clockwise to get through Canada early in my ride, hopefully getting through it within a day’s ride so I could be sleeping back in the US of A for my first rest stop.
The optional bonus listings were released promptly on time, and I immediately got busy editing the list of GPS waypoints into the naming format I wanted. I have a processing checklist that I use, taken from other riders, and customized based on past rally experiences. There had even been a “mock rally” trial run for this event several weeks prior so that everyone could get familiar with how this particular rally would work, and the formats of the bonus files. The Rallymaster, a nice fellow named RenoJohn, really went out of his way to make all the bonus files and waypoint names as easy as possible for the riders to import into a mapping program. This included a letter code that indicated the number of points the bonus was worth. If only I’d remembered this little factoid! With so much information flowing through the rally email list being busy at work in the weeks leading up to this day, I overlooked some of the basics and caused myself significant wasted time and effort on the morning of the rally.
After updating the waypoint names, I had trouble importing my edited .GPX file into my Basecamp routing software. I had tested this during the mock rally and KNEW it should work right…there just must be a typo or two in the file based on my fat fingers. There were well over 200 waypoints to pick through in the file, but the formatting makes it pretty easy to spot most mistakes. However, after over three HOURS (and several additional grey hairs) of slicing and dicing the text file, I finally identified the problem as being a few special characters like ampersands (&) in the waypoint names not being allowed in the import file. My editing process had overwritten the special codes (like “&:) that replaced these characters in the original file provided by the rally staff. Though it was now close to 10:00 and the rally had started almost three hours ago, I kept my composure fairly well (I think), though I was super pissed at myself after remembering all of a sudden that the waypoint letter codes made everything I had just done completely unnecessary! Reading comprehension is so key during these events, even before you start collecting bonuses…usually not a problem for me but lessons learned!
Now that I had all the bonii in Basecamp, I still had to create a route! Luckily (or not), the rally staff saw fit to put a minimum of bonuses in the northeast in comparison to the rest of the country. This made it fairly easy to eliminate some far-flung high pointers in places like Bangor, Quebec City, and Halifax. I quickly drew up a route based on the fastest route for the triangle,looping around Lake Ontario and adding nearby bonuses. Still plenty of time cushion left, even with my late start, so I copied that first route and added some additional bonuses in the midwest, pulling my loop out further west around Lake Erie and noting some bonuses that I would elect to add or subtract along the way.
OK, good, that’ll have to do – I’d have to see how my first leg went and do some recalculation during the first rest stop. So after spending a total of about 3 minutes on my route plan and adrenaline flowing, I was yanking on the last bits of my riding gear and getting the bike packed up. I mounted my fully charged phone with the Bubbler GPS app running (for my spotwalla.com tracking map) and covered it with a ziploc and rubber band.
The real heavy rains had passed on by now, but the showers were steady on the short ride up to Newport VT. The triangle corner bonuses were “picture match”, meaning we were provided with a picture of something and we needed to try to take as close as possible a photo, only with our bike and placard visible. My first corner bonus was the Brown Cow restaurant in Newport – here is the sample pic as well as mine:
By the time I arrived after 10:00, the little restaurant was pretty busy and all the parking in front of it was taken. However, there was a sidewalk ramp right in front that I was able to use, to ride my bike up onto the sidewalk and get my photo. Had to stand out in the street a bit to get the correct angle around a parked pick-up truck. I was underway and officially started my rally!