Towson MD – Fredericksburg VA
Sat October 6, 2018
(~ 494 miles)

The gentle tones of the default Android alarm tone jolted me out of sleep (per my self-training), and we got ourselves prepped and packed up in short order, with time for a cup of hotel room coffee. It was too early for breakfast in the lobby and made do with protein shakes and fig newtons for now. Still under cover of darkness, we headed back over to the Marathon station with a few minutes to spare.

I don’t know what it is with me and urban gas station night life on these road trips, but yet again I was accosted by a local gentleman seeking salvation, this time in the form of borrowing our cell phone. Wearily, we told him we couldn’t really hear him and couldn’t really help him, and we proceeded to operate the pump.

Our first receipt for a dribble of gas was a couple minutes early, but the second attempt was success (I had to walk to the window for both receipts, which actually helped with the waking up process). We clocked out of our REST bonus at precisely 04:54 (~ six hours and 14 seconds total) and headed back to the highway.

We continued the previous night’s run north on I-695 to I-83 south, back into Baltimore. We exited onto the mostly deserted city streets, seen only by garbage trucks and overnight utility worker crews. We located the giant flamingo outside a cafe near Roosevelt Park, where my ever-dedicated pillion stood in the street to get our bonus photo.

I hadn’t really previewed the roads leading us south through the city – I-83 just sort of peters out into Baltimore at some point and drops you onto local streets and then the divided highway MD-295. This put doubt in my sleepy head, but we decided to trust the GPS for now. Early Saturday morning is probably the best timing to do this, and we hit mostly green lights and no traffic.

We found the “big dummy” nicknamed Lamont (a la ‘Sanford & Son’) outside a highway safety dept office building in the suburb of Glen Burne MD.

We continued south briskly on MD-295 (Balt-Washington Parkway), eyes still peeled for critters. We were feeling good, if sleepy – still running on schedule and today promised a bit clearer weather than yesterday – some sunshine always lifts the mood up a bit.

We crossed within the DC beltway (I-495) on MD-193 and found our way onto the campus of the University of Maryland. At the appropriate coordinates near the top of a rise, we pulled over and put on the flashers (still dark and nobody really around).

We found the nice statue of Kermit the Frog with creator Jim Henson, arranged on a concrete bench over in the deep shadows of some trees. Having a good flashlight really helped out with this one.

We rode back out to the Beltway and zipped northwest on I-270 for a longish out-and-back run to another college campus, Montgomery College in Germantown. Here we visited the very cool “Earthoid” steel water tank, built in 1978, painted to look like Earth from space based on student vote, and apparently winner of the 1980 “Steel Tank of the Year” award (who knew?). It was actually pretty impressive and one of my favorite sites that we visited on this rally.

Back to the Beltway to cross the Potomac and pick up I-66 headed west again. We stopped off in the little burg of Front Royal (gateway to Skyline Drive) for this happy little metal man sculpture, made of duct work.

We met another rally rider here and ended up following him for the next stretch of miles south on US-340, through the Shenandoah valley, which was a nice ride, but frustratingly slow due to some cagers taking their time.

On the eastern outskirts of Luray, we pulled in with our companion to find another couple riders already getting their shots of the Yogi Bear statue at this park and golf facility on US-211.

We headed west to I-81 now for a long stretch down to Staunton, stopping in at a McDonalds for a quick nature and food break. The sun finally began to peek out along the interstate, and we enjoyed the scenery on I-81, if not the ever-present truck traffic. In Staunton, we easily located the giant flower pots we needed. Both of us dismounted for a stretch and a closer-up photo out on the traffic island next to the railroad bridge.

A 39-point bonus in nearby Waynesboro was time-limited and only available to claim between 09:00 and 11:00. So even though we had more work to do on I-81, we detoured east for several miles via US-250 (lots of lights, should have taken the interstate) to a nice little town park by the South River.

Here we dismounted to jog a couple hundred yards across the field to snap a photo of one of the ubiquitous Virginia “LOVE” sculptures that are scattered everywhere throughout the state. Fishing was clearly the local theme here, with a wader boot, reel, fish, and paddles making up the letters in this one. We bumped into our old pals, Jim & Donna, while we were here.

Now we hopped on I-64 back to I-81 for the long slog down to Buena Vista and back, all to pick up the 39 points for this super-cool custom cyborg Mufflerman statue. I’d visited this guy before during the Mason-Dixon this past spring in the middle of the night (when he looks a lot scarier). Still a cool site – note the little man in the chest driving the big robot.

Our next stop was in the small town of Scottsville, almost due east of our position. We chose to head back up the interstate system over to Charlottesville and do another out-and-back for the bonus. The ETA was similar to a more direct scenic route, and the interstate would be a more predictable path traffic-wise. 90 miles later, we pulled in to the roadside store with the big white rooster out front, for our photo.

Coming south on VA-20, we had passed many other riders heading the opposite way toward Charlottesville. We figured many of them were from the other starting locations – the bonus scatter pattern dictated a pretty clear approach to the finish in Fredericksburg, coming from the south like we were.

We made our run back north on 20 (a nice road once you get around the slow cagers) to Charlottesville, where my companion reveled in her name plastered in every direction we looked. 🙂 We navigated through some local roads into some sort of artist fairgrounds, where some sort of community fair was happening with temporary booths amongst some larger permanent art installations, including the big BUTT sculpture that we needed a photo of. It wasn’t immediately apparent in the full parking lot with folks walking around, so we hailed a groundskeeper.

“Excuse us… could you please tell us where the big butt is?”, smiling.

He did a double-take, then grinned and directed us right to it. The photo requirement was to get a photo of yourself posed to kiss the butt. For two-up teams, this means both rider and pillion must be in the shot along with our flag. Luckily, there was a stream of rally riders coming along to these bonuses now, and we exchanged taking photos with the next rider after us.

We headed out of town and picked up VA-22, another nice road heading northeast for the home stretch, stopping off in Orange for our final bonus photo of a giant nutcracker head.

Traffic got denser and denser as we approached Fredericksburg, and riders on their final approach like us began to filter together. The last couple miles on VA-3 was painstaking stop-and-go strip-mall-and-traffic-light territory. Finally, we followed the crowd into the parking lot of our host hotel, and pulled up for our odometer reading almost exactly 30 hours after our starting time – exactly according to plan.

 

We collected our scoring envelope – it’s not over yet! – and headed around the hotel to our designated parking. We greeted other riders in the lot and inside as we found a place to sit down and complete our scoring prep. We took our time to do things right and handed in our envelope with about 15 minutes to spare, being sure to meet and thank the rallymaster Scott for all his hard work on the event.

We chatted with other riders in the common area while we waited to be scored, comparing notes and ride experiences. Soon enough, our number was called and we entered the scoring room where we were assigned to Rachael (a.k.a. MC blogger extraordinaire, Fuzzy Galore) to be scored. A nice bonus, so here’s our bonus photo to prove it. Nice meeting you Rachael! 🙂

Our scoring was clean – no mistakes and no points left on the table, including having our rally sticker on the bike at the finish and bringing our flag to scoring. Regardless of where we place, it’s always good feeling like you kept your wits about you through to the finish.

Now the real challenge began – finding our way around this maze of a hotel! With well-meaning but conflicting advice from several other riders, we managed to get to the front desk and checked in OK.

Then we wandered the halls for several minutes looking for our room and trying to figure out the most efficient place to park for unloading. That done, we enjoyed hot showers and a relatively fresh change of clothes before heading back down to socialize.

We compared notes with other folks and told tales about this bonus or that. At last the bar opened and everyone wandered into the banquet room to continue the festivities. As is almost always the case, there were a couple people who had done some routing that I hadn’t even seen as possible. I figured we were up in the running, but probably not on the podium.

Scott entertained us all with some Void Rally history and off-color commentary before and after the delicious meal of various meat, veggie and pasta choices. We all ate like starving rally riders.

As we dove into dessert, the winners from the three locations (and the 10 hour event) were announced. As expected, there were several tie scores, for one placing or another, which were broken by efficiency (most points per mile ridden).

Reading’s podium was all two-up teams, with the Amans and Arsenaults in a tie for first, nudging out Char and I by a 13-point bonus. The Amans were announced as the winners based on efficiency (which surprised all of us), but this was later corrected due to a spreadsheet error and the Arsenaults took the day, running about 100 miles less than the Amans. We were very happy for our friends and pleased to have managed a third place.

After the banquet ended, we wandered, punch-drunk, next door to Outback for another drink and more tale-telling before hitting the hay for a much-desired rest. I had a scenic back-roads ride (with pie) planned out to get us home over the next couple days, rather than blast back on the highway, but we had a long day in the saddle tomorrow to try and get it all in.

Our route (34 bonus stops), by bonus ID:
CABO, BOVN, DNUT, PDRG, FORK, BODG, BRBL, HULK, EGLE, BOSS, MANG, TAFY, GLAS, LUCY, MJOE, HALF, VKNG, BCOW, DRBG, DINO, BSTP, REST, FLAM, DUMY, KERM, EART, DUTM, YOGI, GWCN, LOVE, CYBG, LROS, BUTT, GNCH