Greenville SC
Sun June 16, 2019
(0 miles)

Waffles. The ubiquitous travel hotel breakfast treat these days, at least if you frequent a lot of Choice brand hotels for points like yours truly. Those industrial pre-mixed pastries got nothin’ on the delicious crusty golden goodness that the Marriott served up for us on Sunday morning. Mr. Hobart did an admirable job capturing their essence in this photo. Later, during the rally, I found myself thinking of these waffles and hoping they would make a reappearance during the finish stay in Greenville. Alas, the “syrup” would never pass the Minuteman 1000’s stringent requirements.

I was up at 06:15 for no particular reason and out of bed by 07:00. Less than six hours sleep to get my rest deficit off to a good start for the next two weeks! :-S. After a good hearty breakfast with the gang, I took another solo morning stroll round the Michelin lot to clear my head and get the juices flowing.

Chatter today included groans of sympathy for Dan Simmonds, whose bike situation had deteriorated. A sensor replacement failed to fix his starting issue and then the dealer found chunks of metal in his oil pan. He’d have to find a different bike to ride. Also, Jim Owen’s passport issue made the gossip column, though it would seem he still had plenty of time to work the logistics on getting it delivered – assuming his wife’s flights stopped getting cancelled! I asked why he wasn’t using his connections to crew the flight himself.

I had the pleasure of meeting Cathy Davies, a delightful sprite of a woman riding a big bright yellow Goldwing. She’d been waiting for a chance to ride the IBR for over 25 years, having first earned her IBA membership back in 1988 and seemed ready for anything!

This afternoon was going to pass quickly, with two meetings and a group photo on the docket before the start banquet. After kicking tires and more socializing, my friends and I walked over to the nearest pizza place for an early lunch. I had a pretty decent gyro sandwich while we enjoyed the air-conditioned escape from the southern heat.

We rookies had to be back at the hotel for a mandatory meeting at noon, sans electronic/mobile devices. Routemaster Jeff Earls spoke to us seriously for a while, asking us to consider our own personal reasons for participating in the rally.  His point was that most of those reasons were selfishly centered around US and the things WE wanted to prove to ourselves and/or others. Our families were putting up with and/or supporting us in our madness, and our primary job was to make it back home safely to them.

Jeff talked about rest management and dropped a small bit of advice that would end up improving my rally tremendously: wear your helmet when resting by the bike and just put a rolled up towel or something behind your neck. I’d used the Iron Butt Motel a few times in the past, but never wearing my helmet, as it would roll my head around uncomfortably. This one little logical suggestion opened the possibility up of sleeping basically anywhere, and I’m grateful to Jeff for thinking to mention it to the new guys. Then there was a Q&A session, where we could ask about logistics or any other rookie questions that came to our head. Some answers were deferred until the full rider meeting that would be held later that day.

Attending the rookie meeting was second-to-last on my registration checklist. Now I simply had to turn it in to Jeff Earls and Mike Kneebone, who welcomed me into the fold. I shook their hands and thanked them heartily for drawing me into this year’s rally. Mike entered me into the final rider list on his laptop and with that keystroke, I’m officially an Iron Butt Rally starter!

The full rider meeting was held at 14:00 and we were specifically asked to bring our laptops to this one, making several of us a bit nervous. Warchild had a bit of fun at the start of the meeting, teasing us that special tape would be passed around to seal the laptops shut for the duration of the rally, but we quickly (and thankfully) moved beyond that nonsense! Information, and lots of it, flowed fast and heavy from Dale, Jeff and Lisa and I took furious notes, including:

• We need to be at our bikes at 08:00 sharp tomorrow with our key and ID card.
• Logistics for arrival at the checkpoint in Kennewick (see Warchild to stop clock!)
• Electronic waypoints would be emailed to us at the conclusion of tonight’s banquet. We would receive a test email during the current meeting and should verify receipt before leaving the room (hence the laptops).
• Rule reminders on routing assistance (not allowed!), etc.
• We need to be at our bikes at 08:00 sharp tomorrow with our key and ID card.
• ODO readings and rules for a broken odometer.
• Review claiming bonuses.
• Review photo rules and what constitutes an “extraneous” photo – basically anything not supporting a bonus claim.
• Meaning of “daylight” 🙂
• Tracking, rest, group photo and call-in bonus procedures.
• Social Media blackout! Don’t post anything, or else!
• We need to be at our bikes at 08:00 sharp tomorrow with our key and ID card.

The meeting concluded a bit late, and I had to wait until I finally saw the test emails arrive in my inbox before packing up and signing out of the meeting. Luckily, both hotel elevators seemed to be working by now, so I made a quick trip upstairs to dump the laptop, change into my rally t-shirt, and ensure I had what I needed for the banquet. Next on the agenda was a group photo out in the blazing sun, in front of Michelin’s HQ entryway. The photographer, Steve Hobart, did an admirable job of herding 100+ Type A individualist personalities onto the steps and arranged according to height, to get everyone’s face showing.

photo: Steve Hobart

Riders dispersed back to the hotel to cool off in the lobby for a while, before the line began to form for the Starting Banquet. Far from the standard beef/chicken/fish banquet food, this was a delicious spread of pulled pork, brisket, fried chicken and some delicious sides and desserts.

photo: Steve Hobart
The food was REALLY good and I ended up going back for seconds despite knowing I had to stay awake tonight for lots of thinking and routing. The Carolina Apple Pie, washed down with some coffee, was delicious, though IMO would have been better served warm.

The northeast crew was able to find seats at a table together. I was so honored and happy to be sitting at this table, surrounded by friends and riding buddies, and with all the other amazing riders and staff in the room around us. The only thing that was going to beat this feeling was if we all sat here again 12 days from now, after a successful ride around the continent. We were all wondering what would be happening between now and that far-off time, but thrilled to be here in the present.

After the fine feast, it was time to circle around to business. IBA President Mike Kneebone spoke a few brief words before passing the reins over to John Harrison, the official scribe for this year’s Iron Butt Rally. John explained the origin of this year’s theme as inspired by Robert Frost’s brief yet famous poem, “The Road Not Taken”, which he recited for us.

Lisa Landry then took charge to supervise the distribution of the rally packs. This year, the riders’ rally numbers were assigned in numerical order of the rider’s IBA membership number. This meant all the IBR vets, with three-digit numbers, were introduced and called up first to get their packets. Then, Cathy Davies was the first rookie to be called, showcasing the long wait she’d endured to fulfill her rally dream.

I knew that my number 63247 would place me somewhere towards the end of this roll call, but was a bit amused and surprised as we got down to the end and Lisa announced “last but not least…” and I went up to proudly receive the final rally flag #103. Out of this entire field, I was the most recent IBA member, despite the overall membership numbers now being somewhere up above 70K (I think?). Guess I got bitten pretty hard by the rally bug.

Jeff Earls took the podium to expand on the theme and explained that rather than focusing on roadside attraction bonuses in more urban areas, he really wanted to send us riders to some quality riding locations in the far-flung corners of the continent…on roads less traveled by the masses. In addition, he wanted to pay tribute to the past rallying era where reading comprehension played a bigger role vs GPS devices in reaching each bonus location (more on that below). We were instructed to open the pack and remove the lanyard with ID tag and put it over our heads….and never remove it until the rally was over! Finally, we were allowed to take out the rally books and start to look over what he had in store for us (click here to download the Leg 1 bonus listing).

Jeff called our attention to some specific aspects of this years book. Some bonuses might require more than one photo or task to complete. Also, we were expected to try to match the rally book photo as closely as we could. Perhaps the most important twist to grasp, he noted that the electronic waypoint files we would be receiving via email would generally NOT contain the precise coordinates of the actual bonus. The intent here was to bring us relatively close to the bonus location and then ensure we fully read the bonus description and followed directions to get to the actual photo location. Some bonuses contained the actual coordinates in the book, some did not. Wow, that was certainly a big change and a lot to take in!

Questions were asked and answered as we all flipped through the book, but except for the coordinates twist, this looked to be a fairly straightforward rally leg. No combos or other puzzle factors like strings were seen or discussed (which kind of disappointed me at the time). There were 12 bonuses labeled R01-R12 that simply required obtaining a computer-generated receipt in a specific town/city. Jeff emphasized that the specific city name must be on the receipt and not a variation. When the questions dried up, we were released to our rooms to begin our routing for Leg 1.

Upon reaching my room, I immediately began my routine for processing the rally pack. However, after looking through more of the bonus descriptions, I realized that many of the bonuses were many actual miles away from the electronic coordinates we were provided. I decided that I couldn’t properly route without more accuracy, so I proceeded through the entire book of 70+ bonuses looking for any that required more than a 2-3 mile diversion from the waypoint. I hand-corrected the coordinates for all of them in my import file before sucking it in to Basecamp. This took extra time, but I believe time well-spent based on some of the stories I would later hear from riders trying to self-correct out on the road. In several cases, the actual bonus was some 20-60 miles away from the electronic waypoint! I knew I wouldn’t have time to do this for the next leg, but would deal with that then!

Leg 1 bonus scatter

The rally pack contains a sheet listing suggested Leg 1 points goals for riders aiming to finish the rally or to place in the medal categories. My first route plan looked to be a solid one based on those estimates, well into gold medal territory, so of course I immediately didn’t trust it. After running through a few more alternate scenarios, I finally came back to my initial route plan and “finalized” it, though it would doubtless need to be revised and tweaked while out on the road. At ~4400 miles, it seemed at first like it might be a lot of miles to aim for, with a tight arrival window at the checkpoint, but it appeared doable based on hours available and hell, I’m just a rookie so what do I know? We expect to be running north of 11K miles by rally’s end, so 4400 was probably not too high for this 3.5 day leg.

In the months leading up to the rally, my friends and I had debated the Leg 1 timeline and what might be in play on the way out west. Key West came up as unlikely (and was indeed omitted from this leg), but I had noted that New York City was definitely in play, though I had desperately hoped not to be going there…

After uploading to my GPS and getting everything pre-packed, I think my head finally hit the pillow around 02:45.