New Castle DE – Fredericksburg VA
Sat Oct 12, 2019
(~433 miles)
Despite only an hour of fitful sleep (for me), we arose promptly with the alarm. I couldn’t resist a quick shower to help me wake up, then we quickly packed while downing some coffee and loaded the bike. Light streaked the sky as we motored back down the road to the gas station for our ending REST receipt.
Heading south, we picked up DE 1 and made really good time over the next hour or two. We enjoyed more beautiful color in the sky as sunrise faded in from our left, light playing on the wispy fog drifting over the huge farm fields.
We stayed on Route 1 to Georgetown, then zigged over to join US-13 in Laurel. After a good 100 miles through Delaware, we crossed into Maryland and looped east of Salisbury. Exiting at US 50, we wound our way on a couple local roads to the Perdue Technical Services building for our next bonus photo. I’m still not quite clear on how this fit with the rally theme, but such understanding is never a pre-requisite for collecting points!
We continued on US-13 south before a long detour southwest on MD 413 to Crisfield, apparently the “Crab Capital”. This little town had also experienced some severe flooding, and some entire areas of the town appeared to be roadblocked. Residents were out walking around dazedly surveying the situation and we felt badly for them having to deal with this. Luckily for us, our bonus location, The Crab Place, required skirting just a few of the deep puddles.
I haven’t had the pleasure of dining on crab, Maryland-style, yet, but were I to do so, this seems like it would be an ideal spot to try it. Yet another out-of-the-way place I hope to revisit during my travels some day.
On our way back out of Crisfield, we passed the scene of a deer-car collision, one less forest rat to plague the streets!
We missed the turn for MD 667 and continued out the way we’d come to US-13. Proceeding south, we stopped off in Pokomoke City to use this Hardee’s as our next fast food stop.
Char and I were both feeling peckish by now, running on just an Ensure protein shake each, plus hotel room coffee. We weren’t familiar with Hardee’s menu for breakfast, and spotted a Dunkin Donuts across the lot. That seemed crowded so we decided to push on a bit further before grabbing a bite.
Forty miles south, we breezed into Exmore, Virginia and snagged our photo of the Exmore Diner, just a short jaunt off 13.
That bonus was our last before crossing the bay. While there were more cars on the road by late morning, we continued making good time and traffic was nothing compared to our travails yesterday on LI. Char had never crossed the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnel by motorcycle, and it was a perfect day for it.
After the slow, but scenic crossing, we hit Virginia Beach and immediately turned on US-60 to find our way to the homey little Leaping Lizard Cafe. An older boy was there to direct parking traffic and allowed us to pull right up for our photo. He had seen a few other riders come through and asked us where we’d started and our destination with interest. We got our photo and he wished us a safe ride.
We agreed that we’d stop at our next fast food bonus, a Bojangles, for a quick bite of hot breakfast. We’d never eaten there, but heard good things about their fresh biscuits. Sure enough, my country ham and egg biscuit sandwich did hit the spot, while Char enjoyed her plain biscuit, both washed down with coffee while sitting at an outdoor table in the sun.
We had a nice 15 minute break off the bike, and I quickly pulled out my laptop to double-check there were no more reachable bonuses to collect on the way into the barn (there weren’t). We joined I-64, then traversed the Norfolk and Portsmouth area on a series of highways, bridges and tunnels amidst light Saturday morning traffic.
We joined US-17 in Suffolk, then US-258 up to Smithfield, a bustling and quaint town that is famous for its ham. We pulled over along the busy main street to get the shot we needed of this sign while lunchgoers and well-dressed passers-by gawked at us. I think I asked Char (vegetarian) if she wanted to stop in and get some ham, just before snapping the photo.
We were feeling pretty relaxed at this point. We hadn’t had enough time to get the additional bonuses further north, so now we had a decent cushion of time to get in to the finish and complete our paperwork. I kept the pace up, but certainly some of the clock pressure was off and we enjoyed seeing a few cotton fields along some curvy back roads when we headed northwest out of Smithfield on the wrong route while trying to go around a busy intersection.
Realizing the routing mistake, I overrode Garmin’s adjusted route and got us back onto VA 10 within several miles of leaving town. We took that road up through Hopewell and back to I-95. In a western suburb of Richmond, we snagged our final “regular” photo bonus at Buz & Ned’s BBQ joint.
It smelled REALLY good – how cruel is a Rallymaster that sends hapless riders to such places for points, without time to eat there??
Just one stop left to go, our fourteenth and final fast food bonus! I had a Dairy Queen picked out right off I-95, about 50 miles to finish. When I told Char and she responded with “Well, maybe we should get a milkshake there…”, it became a perfect ending stop for our rally together. That’s my girl!
After getting our photo, we went in to get our treat. Vanilla for her while I opted for a peanut-butter malted shake. We stood in that dirty, busy gas station parking lot and enjoyed the hell out of those shakes!
The final miles passed quickly on I-95 north to Fredericksburg, and we pulled into the finish line to get our scoring envelope at 14:07. Plenty of time remaining, but none to waste. We gathered our stuff from the bike and found seats in the prep room set aside for riders to do paperwork. As we crossed T’s and dotted I’s, our friends trickled in to join us, looking as tired as we felt.
We got everything sorted, then submitted our envelope at 14:53, just seven minutes to DNF. Now we could feel the relief at being done and could just mingle with all the other riders in the waiting area, chatting and exchanging tales of the previous 32 hours. Somehow in the hubbub, we missed our number being called in for scoring and, as per the rules, our envelope was placed at the back of the stack. Scoring was going very slowly today, and we’d later learn that there were some problems with the spreadsheet they use to record everything.
This meant we could be sitting around for a very long time, so Char went off to get us checked in while we waited. Some folks like my buddy James were able to grab a nap, but I didn’t want to chance missing our name being called out again. Poor James had just ridden over 1700 miles for his route and made it back just a few minutes too late to be a finisher. Well-deserved rest I’d say.
We were finally shown in for scoring. Despite having emailed all our bonus photos in during the rally to help speed-up the scoring process, the spreadsheet problem necessitated manual entry of all the bonus codes and points values. We felt bad for the scoring staff, but could do nothing to help. We all got through it and in the end, we’d had a clean run, with no points left on the table.
Mentally drained, we now headed for the bike to get it closer to our room, then brought our gear in to clean up and get ready for the banquet, in just a half hour or so.
