Coralville IA – Great Bend KS
Wed Jun 19, 2024
(~714 miles)

Engage people with what they expect; it is what they are able to discern and confirms their projections. It settles them into predictable patterns of response, occupying their minds while you wait for the extraordinary moment — that which they cannot anticipate.

― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

A rallymaster legend recently quoted an adage to the effect of, “If you aren’t pissing off 10% of the riders, you’re probably not doing it right.” Well I was feeling it all right. Stress, confusion, frustration, disappointment – all coursing through me like little jets of adrenaline and blocking the typical excited anticipation. The rider meeting wasn’t even over, and there I sat considering voluntary withdrawal from a rally before it even begins.

Despite yesterday’s revelations about risk mitigation to satisfy the insurance people, I wasn’t mentally prepared for the fundamental rule changes being introduced to this year’s LDX Rally. While my head understands much of the reasoning, my heart was refusing to accept. This was me being dragged, kicking and screaming, into the uncertain future of long-distance rallying. 😖

— — —

My “rally” alarm tone woke me abruptly round 03:30, after perhaps five hours of sleep. I quickly showered and powered up the laptop and TV to be ready to route. At precisely 04:00, when we were allowed to leave our rooms, I grabbed my stuff and headed out to the bike to get it uncovered and fill up my hydration thermos. Then I hit the lobby for some brewed coffee. My understanding at the time was that cell phones had been banned from the rider meeting (not correct) so I did not take mine along with me this morning. Hence, I’ll sprinkle in some of the great pics from this morning shot by rally photographer extraordinaire Tobie Stevens.

The coffee station had a short line, but we all jostled politely around each other to get our fix. Wandering over into the foyer outside the designated rally function room, it seemed everyone was keeping to the edges of the room. Because of the carpet’s multi-colored weave, it took me a couple beats to notice an additional symmetrical pattern on the floor where nobody was standing. People were looking down at it. Getting closer, I could see several rows of something on the floor…are those…paper footprints? Yes, yes they are.

Odd! But I’m sure we’ll find out what they mean soon enough. They appeared to have rider names written on them. Sipped some coffee. Hmm, curious. Clocked ticked on. Nothing happened. We all waited for the function room doors to open, but they did not. Sipped more coffee. Tick tock.

Then rider Nick Byrne got the bright idea of standing on the footprints that had his name inscribed, maybe to see what would happen. He must have received some sign of approval from staff, because he began calling out for everyone else to follow suit. Controlled chaos ensued as everyone searched out their names and formed into orderly rows.

Once everyone was lined up, (Rally)Master Sergeant Nancy Oswald made her entrance to inspect the troops and everyone quieted down. For suddenly, we realized that we were being conscripted as a military unit, for some as-yet-unknown purpose! Nancy was dressed to channel a hard-ass military drill instructor, and looked like she meant business.

Sergeant Oz walked the line, giving folks a hard time, though I couldn’t quite hear all the amusing insults and byplay at the time. Check out today’s official daily report for a full accounting. When she reached me, I realized I had been earmarked for some abuse when she told me the kindergarten ride was next week. I had decided it would be safest to just answer everything with a hearty “Sir, yes sir!”

I had no idea what the proper honorific is for female senior officers. Some women do not like to be called “ma’am”, and several sci-fi shows use “sir” as a futuristic gender-neutral, so that’s what I went with. Considering the rally theme, yet to be revealed, I’d say I was pretty on-point, actually! 😛

However, Sarge feigned offense, asking me if she looked like a man. Sticking to my guns with a firm “Sir, no sir”, she broke up laughing as did many in the room. Haha, chalk one up for the riders!

Soon after that, we were finally allowed into the meeting room to continue the unveiling of the rally theme. Near the front of the room was a table with an ominous-looking stack of green ammunition boxes with two-digit numbers. That probably caught the eye of every rider as we found places to sit around the tables. Alright, in tandem with the apparent military theme, those must be the rally packs? Plastic maybe?

Once everyone was seated, we were asked to rise again for the “Honorable Lew Ballard”, who entered the room attired in long black judge’s robes. It seems that the entire rally staff was getting in on the opening presentation this time around – good stuff! We raised our right hands and were sworn in, still unaware of what exactly we were committing to.

Then the room was darkened and the intro to our mission briefing began, in the form of a 15 minute video containing spliced-together cuts of several sci-fi movies like Independence Day, Transformers, and Avengers – showing clips of alien attacks and human military responses with all sorts of heavy equipment. Volume was cranked and at 04:30 in the morning, the special effects were quite an assault on the senses!

Earth vs Aliens, what a cool theme!

Rallymaster “General” Paul Tong then made his entrance, somber in expression, dressed to the nines in knee-high boots. He proceeded to recite a full-length bastardized version of the famous opening monologue delivered by George C. Scott in the movie Patton. The entire text of the speech can also be found in the official Day 0 daily report. The more I had time to think about it later, the more I had to chuckle in disbelief of his commitment to addressing every detail of these rallies. I mean, who memorizes and delivers a performance like this at 05:00 when there is an entire nine-day rally about to kick off with all the logistics it entails!?

Roll call of us sworn-in Earth defense troops (for that is indeed what we are) followed, with each rider hustling up front to receive our rally pack from Sergeant Oz. And no, those ammo boxes were not plastic, but authentic clankety-clank metal ammo cans, custom-stenciled with our rally flag number in white paint. As if that wasn’t enough, Paul had had the accurate logos for branch of service and rank at discharge displayed as well, for all riders who had been in the service – a very nice touch to honor all the veterans!

Oh, and these boxes didn’t contain our rally flags…they ARE the rally flags! Jeez! This is the point where rally stress began to bubble in the pit of my stomach. Based on Tong rally history, it was not completely unexpected to have a 3D object serving as a rally flag, but how the hell was I going to fit this awkward metal box with sharp corners onto my more-or-less full and organized bike while making it easy to access at each bonus?  Obviously, there would be no using my Hammy-stick during this rally to get bonus photos from the saddle! As intended, use of non-standard “flags” can definitely cause a rider some distraction — and each little distraction adds up in this game.

While the flag storage dilemma whirled in my head, our mission briefing continued. When directed, we opened our rally flags (!) and were treated to a professional looking Mission Briefing folder and a thick spiral-bound booklet. Next began the dive into the nitty gritty of how the bonus collection and scoring for this rally will work. It’s a doozy of a puzzle for our poor barely-woken little brains! Here we go.

The bonus locations are divided into two main types:

1. Aliens
2. Earth military equipment assets – further divided into equipment categories: Tanks, Rotary aircraft (helos), and Fixed Wing aircraft (planes).

The military bonuses are decommissioned military vehicles that are on public display around the US and Canada. Think VFW halls, town parks, museums, etc. These bonuses have very small point values (between 1 – 15 points each), but there are a LOT of them. These were detailed in the thick spiral booklet in our rally pack, which also included historical information and specs on the various equipment models we’d be hunting for (something to enjoy reading through post-rally!).

Our primary objective are the higher-point alien bonuses (alien leaders, robots, bases and ships). A minimum of 5000 alien points needs be claimed for Leg A of the rally. In addition to the points they are worth, each alien is assigned an asset hitpoint rating, which indicates the number and category of military points that must be claimed first, in order to “defeat” the alien and collect its points. The ratings are provided for each alien bonus in the rally pack using this specific sequence:

(Tank, Rotary, Fixed Wing).

EXAMPLE: An alien bonus is worth 1883 points and has an asset rating of (10, 0, 10). That means we will need to first collect military bonuses adding up to at least 10 tank points and 10 fixed-wing points before we can go collect (defeat!) that alien and claim the 1883 points.

We may collect as many extra military points as we like between each alien, but as soon as we claim an alien bonus, ALL our collected military assets (since the previous alien) are used for that battle, so our assembled “strike force” points are all reset to 0. We still receive the small points for the military bonuses, but they are no longer available to count against the next alien’s hitpoint rating.

In addition to the military location bonuses, in the lobby before the start we will be able to purchase additional military asset points in the form of optional Fire Support Cards. For $15 apiece (going directly to a charity), we can obtain one 15-point card each for the Tank, Rotary, and Fixed-wing categories. These are literal “wildcards”, and can each be claimed once in any sequence during the leg, just as if we had visited a military bonus location (but without riding the miles). The points can be used against the next alien’s hitpoints.

I enjoy rallies with a puzzle and this looked like it would be a good challenge, but holy cow, this is a bunch of categories! My head is already spinning, already trying to work out how to represent all the bonus types on the map for routing purposes. It bears noting that the puzzle didn’t seem so clear and concise as I’ve just tried to describe it. Rather, it was spread over a couple pages, couched in military jargon, cool little graphics, and equipment specification numbers.

Did I mention it was only about 05:30 at this point? So much information to take in so early. Especially knowing we only had a fixed number of hours to process it and create a route before we could start moving our bikes into the start area after 12:00. Crank that stress level up another notch, but so far this is all part of the normal game.

The rallymaster pushed on unrelentingly in the briefing, to cover surprisingly restrictive new guidelines for meal and rest bonuses. Paul’s daily 45-minute meal bonus breaks, well-known by now, are already a significant deviation from other events. While not mandatory, these breaks are usually worth enough points (especially as exponential multipliers) to make them competitively necessary. The stated purpose is to get riders off their bikes for a longer break at least once a day.

Previously, what we did during the meal bonus was up to us, so long as we were off the bike and purchased food to generate the necessary receipt. That seemed to work out well, as you could use that off-bike time to stretch your muscles with a walk, catch a quick nap, and re-check your routing, as well as purchasing the meal of your choosing to generate the necessary receipt. Whatever worked best for you individually to keep yourself rested and alert.

This time, however, we would only be allowed to claim the points at “sit-down” restaurants with wait (or cafeteria-style) service and must purchase something that would be considered a full “meal”. No fast food places (including Subway!) or convenience stores, yet places like Dennys, IHOP, and other greasy spoons would be approved. What’s more, I had the impression that our choices of food items could be accepted/denied based on their “nutritional value”. This seemed to fall within a narrow subjective definition that sounded, based on the examples mentioned, remarkably like dishes you’d find on a typical Thanksgiving dinner table!

Some of this may have been intended as tongue-in-cheek, but the humor was lost on me at this early hour. 😒 I’m not sure how many riders eat rich, heavy or greasy food on the clock, but it’s not what I eat on a rally, delicious as it may otherwise sound. The fresh sandwiches I usually get on the road are a healthy and stomach-friendly supplement to my typical high-protein tank bag food.

Dealing with wait service will surely take up a significant portion of each 45 minute break and drive up the cost of food over the course of the rally, including tips. It seems to me that being off the bike for the required amount of time should be enough to satisfy the safety concerns, without delving into this level of minutiae. Sometimes, you just do what you gotta do to fulfill the bonus requirements. 🤷‍♂️

While I struggled to mentally process these oddly-specific meal requirements, our briefing proceeds without pause to introduce significant changes to rest bonus guidelines that really turn things sideways.

In the 2022 LDX, each leg offered a single rest bonus of unfixed duration, taken at any part of day, within an overall time window. They weren’t mandatory, though the per-minute points essentially made them so. Still, riders could strategize whether it was worth it (or necessary!) to maximize the rest points or cut them short as needed to make up for lost time on the road. This is pretty typical of recent rally practices and a big part of the game. Riders had some flexibility to work out their own overall rest strategy during the leg, while still ensuring at least one longer period off the bike every couple of days (including at checkpoints) for safety.

Big changes here – there are now daily mandatory rest bonuses, with no point value assigned. Four hours minimum EVERY NIGHT that must occur between 20:00 and 06:00, with a total of 16 hours required over the three nights of the first leg. Rallies have had mandatory rest bonuses in the past, but not every single day of the event. This really turns the game on its head. Equally disappointing is restricting the rest bonus to only during evening hours, which is when many LD riders often prefer to ride strategically, taking advantage of empty roadways to avoid traffic congestion or hot afternoon temperatures.

This is also going to drive up out-of-pocket costs. While hotels are not mandatory, we’ll be required to remain off the bike in one place to claim the rest bonus points. Counting on finding a safe comfortable place to rest/sleep outdoors for a guaranteed 4-6 hours seems a risky strategy. It’s one thing to take shorter naps in rest areas or parks – you can get up and leave when needed. But we cannot do that in this case, except in an emergency. If forced to move on for whatever reason, you’d need to spend time finding a new place and re-start the rest timer all over again. And if you don’t complete the required minutes by 06:00, you DNF

Of course you could call the rallymaster to explain things and plead your case, but by then time’s been a wastin’. There are just too many unknowns that could screw up your entire leg plan or worse, when every minute counts. Having to stop that long, I might as well have the peace of mind of a booked reservation, access to a shower and wifi in case I need it, and at least a couple hours (hopefully) of comfortable sleep.

All the above is flashing through my thoughts in real time as the briefing unfolded. While not surprising to see some rule changes after yesterday’s insurance conversation, the specifics were still a drastic shock to me. Aside from the puzzle, this rally seems to be shaping up more akin to a long-distance touring trip (albeit a pretty strenuous one). That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s a different game than the one I thought we’d be playing, and hard to learn just hours from the starting line. Regardless of whether the details of the new rules are due to specific insurance requirements or not, it was immediately clear that they fundamentally affect the nature of this event at the competitive level.

After covering use of the LDX phone app to clock in and out of the mail/rest brakes and and proper receipt documentation, the topic turned to speeding, as in – don’t do it. Excessive speeding has already been verboten in the big rallies for many years, and Tong rallies have a particularly stringent lack of tolerance for it. Suffice to say, the guidelines were lectured verbally in even stricter terms than outlined in the rally book.

The final straw that almost broke this camel’s back, however, was the prohibition of radar detectors. To me this really seemed stretching beyond the usual domain of rally rules, especially when not published in advance. To date, auxiliary fuel tanks and exhaust pipes are pretty much the only motorcycle equipment specifically addressed (if at all) in rally rulebooks. Those guidelines are to ensure fairness in fuel capacity and public courtesy respectively.  Radar detectors are legal equipment in all states (minus VA). Anybody can install and use one, so there is no competitive advantage gained and they don’t bother anybody. With rally staff already monitoring our speed via satellite tracking and other super-secret algorithms, it just seems unnecessary and redundant.

Not all riders use detectors, but for those of us that do, they are considered essential to our kit. There are different reasons to use a radar detector on today’s highways, especially when putting in long miles. While one reason is the explicit intent of riding fast and evading the consequences, for me the device is most useful in keeping aware of my speed when my concentration is shifting between navigation, driving defensively, and all the other things that vie for our attention on the road. Let’s say you’re zipping along at 70 mph for a couple hours, thinking about…whatever. It’s so easy to lose track and miss the signage when you suddenly hit a 55-mph speed zone, which is exactly the spot where a LEO is likely to wait to generate revenue for their jurisdiction. I’m not trying to “get away with” speeding there. Hearing the radar alert will remind me to watch my speed and slow down if necessary – isn’t that the goal?

Many motorcyclists enjoy riding their bikes at a lively pace close to the limits of what a reasonable LEO typically allows – this is part of the attraction to riding on two wheels. It’s one thing to get penalized in the rally for excessive speed, but getting a citation due to a lapse in concentration can get expensive, especially with insurance premium increases. This is now one more thing that we will have to divide our attention to over long hours and miles, with potential consequences beyond any rally penalties. Piled on top of all the other surprise changes during the briefing, I’m sitting there questioning whether I want to risk riding for several days without this warning system that I take for granted. Would I be able to ride this rally with any sense of enjoyment? If not, why am I doing this?

As the 1.5h rider meeting was drawing to a close, I was reeling from the 1-2-3 punch combo of meal, rest, and speeding rule changes. We’re told to expect the unexpected at LD rallies, but the nature of these particular changes hits hard at the soul of the game I love to play. At that moment, the absolute brilliance and fun of the rally theme and puzzle were lost on me. My enthusiasm had been utterly drained by thoughts of riding around the country slower than surrounding traffic, unprotected from radar traps, while paying for meals and hotels that I didn’t want or need. This was my low point of dark thoughts, as I teetered on the brink of withdrawing right after the meeting ended.

Somewhere in here the rallymaster spoke up about those same insurance concerns and solutions that came up during yesterday’s casual conversation. That the very existence of LD rallies seems to be hanging on by a thread and that “this could very well be the last rally“, such was the state of uncertainty about our sport’s future that morning. While quite a downer on top of everything, it was a necessary reminder and penetrated at least some of the emotional fog clouding my vision. As we were dismissed, I realized that I really did want to make this work somehow, for love of the game.

One step at a time. First, I would walk away from this meeting without a word and give myself time to cool down and take stock. I needed to focus on the next steps and try to see if I could get my head into the game, albeit a very different game than what I had been anticipating. While many riders turned to head for the breakfast buffet, we were on the clock now so I went straight to my room. “Fake it until you make it” seemed like a good strategy, so I immersed myself in the busywork of processing the Leg A bonus files when they arrived via email shortly thereafter. Having tasks to do helped me focus and turn my thoughts from all the new rules.

Checking the weather first, looks like a bit of a wet start to the ride, however based on the shape of the radar pattern, we might just luck out and miss the heaviest rain cells as the storm moves east along I-80.

The first mental hurdle is to settle on an altered “rally pace” for this event. Something I can live with as a reasonable velocity that would keep me in the flow of traffic, not trigger attention from law enforcement, and not set off any alarm bells at rally central. If it did, I’d decide what to do at that point. I’m still quite concerned about riding around the country without radar, but rules are rules.

For the meal and rest bonuses, I needed to shift my attitude to view them similarly to any standard bonus location requiring some sort of fee or admission charge to get access. They would still be  distractions for me, but I’d try to order the quickest healthy options at the restaurants and still use the time to review my plans and catch up on paperwork.

Here’s the Leg A scatter:

It took me some extra time to decide how to represent all the different bonus categories (including availability) in my Basecamp mapping software. I finally decided on a set of icons that would make some sense to me while visualizing routes and imported the waypoints. In my distraction, I ended up making a copy/paste error that cost me 45 minutes having to go through this process twice. 🤦‍♂️ Tick tock…

Once I had everything imported, I went in search of the breakfast buffet just before 0800 when it was due to close. After wandering a bit through the slight maze of hotel corridors, I found my to the now darkened and deserted conference room near the restaurant that still had some cold breakfast nibbles in the buffet service pans. I scraped together some of the remaining food scraps onto a plate and brought it back to the room with some more coffee. Then I headed back out to the lobby to purchase my three Fire Support cards from Lew.

Lew and I have some fond rally memories together and I consider him a friend, so he must have seen something in my face that clued him in on my mood. He asked if I was doing OK and after staring blankly, not knowing how to answer, I managed some sort of short response. I was still waaay inside my head. After returning to my room, Lew’s gesture of concern really got to me, helping me regain some perspective. This is just a game and there’s no telling if there will be another one like it. So what if you don’t like all the rules – people have put a lot of effort into this event, so if you’re going to play, then play! Later, while heading to the starting lot, I sought Lew (and a couple other staff) out to express my appreciation for all they were doing to put on the rally for us.

In the meantime, it was time to start my actual routing, almost two hours (!) after receiving the rally files. Needless to say, I was quite behind my pace. It had been made clear that we should be monitoring our email throughout the entire rally for important information, and some had already started flowing based on the live group Zoom call that the rallymasters had available for riders to join at will to ask questions. Paul sent out a corrections for a couple bonuses, including the complete removal of one bonus. I dutifully deleted the bonus from the source data files so that I wouldn’t even look at it while routing. Let’s remember that in a couple days, shall we…?

I’d read through the puzzle a couple times by now, and grasped the basic necessary routing pattern. A solid strategy seemed to be targeting the alien bonuses you wanted to hit as the overall anchors of the route, and then ensure that you were able to efficiently add in the required military asset bonuses prior to each particular alien. That might mean riding past an alien to collect the necessary assets to come back and succeed in battle. The Fire Support (wild)cards added an important factor to remember as well, as they can substitute for a military asset type that might not be along your route towards the alien you want. You could only use each card once however, so there is a lot to keep track of!

After having to re-run my waypoint import at least one more time due to other typos that I did spot (foreshadowing alert), here’s the crazy map I ended up with for routing, using almost every one of the basic shape icons in the Basecamp program.

My attention was drawn to the “cluster” of super-high-point bonuses (purple) in the southwest quadrant of the country. I tried to get a big loop working to include NM, CA, NV and back through CO. The problem was it didn’t seem possible to get more than one or two of the aliens, due to a lack of military bonuses in between them. That morphed into a second route attempt focused on a very high point bonus in northern New Mexico as the turnaround point and then circling down through southern NM and Texas to Dallas. By the time I’d vetted this route for a bit, time was running short and I needed to get everything transferred to my GPS devices, finish packing up, etc. There was no time to look for anything better. I wasn’t at all confident of the route and still feeling rattled, if resigned.

The rally office was available after 11:00 to store anything we wanted to leave at the hotel, but the door was locked. I tracked down Nancy to open it up and dropped my bag of stuff in there. Then I quickly booked a hotel for tonight along my route and finished moving the rest of my stuff from room to bike. That weather front was now moving through eastern Iowa this morning, all around us, but it seemed like the storms had stayed magically split around I-80 to our north and south, so we were left with just cloudy skies but no rain.

I needed to figure out how I’d be carrying the metal ammo can. I fiddled with a cargo bungee net at first to try carrying the boxy “flag” atop my cylindrical aux fuel tank. Yeah, that’s not happening, so I shifted things around in my luggage and made room within my right pannier liner bag so the saddlebag plastic wouldn’t get chipped on the inside. Getting off the bike at every bonus was already a given at this point anyway, given the type of “flag” and the fact that we would need to match the rally book photos very closely. Now I’d also have to open my saddlebag to retrieve the box every time. I idly wondered what local people near the bonus locations will think about motorcyclists pulling up somewhere with a green ammo box, setting it down, then walking away from it to get the photo. 🤔

A separate portion of the hotel’s parking lot was set aside for the rally start. It was manned by staff gatekeepers starting at noon and all bikes had to be moved within by 12:30. The staff did a quick odometer reading as each of us entered and then it was just a waiting game.

Having gained a small measure of perspective by now, I determined to bury my feeling and opinions and ride the best damn rally I could over the next several days within the confines of the new rules. Deep down, I knew that many of these rules  were implemented out of necessity to secure insurance coverage for the event. Very likely, some of these changes will end up framing the “new normal” for LD rallies going forward, for better or worse. 😒

I forced myself to walk around a bit, getting a few photos and wishing other riders luck, trying to keep a light mood. The idea started to sink in that finally I’d be out riding my motorcycle around the country for the next several days and some excitement was slowly creeping back in.

At 12:45, the rallymaster gathered us all together for a final quick meeting. Same as 2022, we sang happy birthday to rider Art Garvin. Then Paul explained the exit procedure once again to get out of the hotel lot and onto I-80. The eastbound onramp was completely closed, so everyone would have to ride west for at least one exit before they could turnaround if that was their intent. After a couple more finger waggles to behave ourselves, we were released back to our bikes to gear up and get prepped for deployment.

At 1300 hours, with assistance from the Coralville PD, 36 motorcycles scooted out of the lot single file in a matter of minutes. Once westbound on the interstate, I quickly got up to my (adjusted) rally pace and settled in for a long blast across the state of Iowa. The GPS showed 274 miles to my first bonus.

As the pack thinned out, I ended up riding close to a couple familiar guys, Eric Edelman and Paul Meyer. We exchanged places frequently through the traffic patterns, working to get around the truck drag-races and the slow vehicles camped in the left lane.

I’ve remarked in the past that I’ve noticed generalized “driver personality” types for different states that I ride through. Iowa drivers generally seem willing to move over when you come up behind them (unlike states like Indiana). It still breaks your rhythm by the time they see you and move, so dodging and weaving a bit is still needed to keep a constant speed. Oh, and don’t forget standing up on the pegs after every pavement seam or other large bump in the road, due to my busted rear shock. Bump… jouncy jouncy jouncy…. 😩

Eventually just Paul and I pulled ahead through traffic by ourselves, as we did after the Leg 3 start of the 2023 IBR, riding north through Wyoming. Guess we just seem to hit similar rhythms out of the gate. We hit some sprinkles for a couple periods, but nothing heavy. The temperatures stayed at a nice comfortable 68F under the cloud cover, so I was perfectly willing to get a little wet in exchange for that cooldown. I lost sight of him somewhere around Des Moines and just continued hauling west.

Finally starting to feel settled in, I rang up Char and was able to finally talk (vent!) about all the things that had been on my mind since the rider meeting. Lucky her! But as always, she’s a great listener and it helped a lot to start getting it off my chest.

Approaching the border with Nebraska, the rainy weather was behind me in exchange for party-cloudy skies in the low 70s. Rather than follow the southwest bend of I-80 down through Omaha, I continued west on I-880 straight towards the state line at the Missouri River.

Hitting I-29 north of the city, I turned north to parallel the border for some 30 miles. I exited via IA 175 into the small city of Onawa, Iowa (what a fun name!), then turned down a small side street for six short blocks to reach a municipal park and veteran’s memorial museum at the edge of town.

Bonus TAPOI (daylight only) is an M-60 Patton model armored tank and my first bonus of the rally, collecting me a whopping 4 armored asset points. The first alien I’m targeting is actually down in Kansas, but the military asset hitpoint requirement to claim it is (10, 10, 0), i.e. 10 armored and 10 rotary aircraft, so that’s what I’m working towards here.

For some reason, something seemed off to me after taking my first photo – something with the sample bonus photo didn’t look quite right. Perhaps the photo in the rally app was incorrect or I was looking at the wrong one, but the tank was facing the opposite direction. Fearing that I may have somehow screwed up the bonus data again and wanting to ensure I properly claimed my first bonus, I phoned the rally staff and confirmed with Nancy the correct bonus code and town location for where I actually was. Everything seemed to check out, so I snapped the correct photo and got back on my way. Always nice to get that first one in the bag!

Heading back west on IA 175, I crossed over the interstate towards the river. A few miles later, I crossed the Missouri River into Decatur, Nebraska via a nice steel truss bridge with a series of sketchy steel grate sections. NE state route 51 led me arrow-straight to the west for the next 15 miles, stopped briefly by a freight train crossing through the late afternoon countryside.

A few miles down the road, I pulled a right into Bancroft, easily locating another M-60 tank in a small town park that served as bonus TAPBN. Chalk up another 4 armored asset points, making 8 for the running total.

Leaving Bancroft, my Garmin XT GPS, in its wisdom, decided to lead me due south on what started as a paved farm road, but soon converted to fairly well-traveled gravel with deeper piles between the tracks to watch out for. Sweet, hitting dirt on the very first day of the rally! 🙄 Seven miles of this stuff (with a lot of standing) eventually got me to pavement. NE 32 east to Oakland, then south on US 77. That proved to be some fast divided four-lane which brought me all the way back down to I-80 north of Lincoln, with a stop on the way to fuel up in Fremont.

Unfortunately we had to take our first meal bonus today, even though we were only riding a half day, so I immediately began looking for restaurant signs once I hit interstate. I was not particularly hungry, but didn’t want to end up getting stuck in rural countryside later this evening with no open “sit-down” restaurants (with good receipts) around anywhere. I spotted signs at the very next exit, so I pulled off the highway on the north side of Lincoln to get this done. Cracker Barrel drew my eye first, but at 19:00 it was still jam-packed and I figured the wait would be long and service too slow. A half mile away, near some hotels was a Perkins with a fairly empty lot, so I parked and used the rally app to start the timer for my first meal bonus.

I ordered a Southwest grilled chicken salad, letting the waitress know that I would be one of her easiest customers of the day. I had limited time and would like the check to come right away with the food please, and no need to keep checking on me after that. I used the time to re-read correct procedures for claiming the meal bonuses, and formed a mental checklist of everything I needed to bring with me into the restaurants each time, to remain efficient. I double-checked my routing for the rest of the day and tomorrow, but nothing really could be changed this early. So I filled in the two bonuses on my bonus claim form while managing to eat most of the salad.

Getting up from the table is when I realized that eating “rich” sit-down meals like this (yes even just a salad with dressing) was going to be an unwelcome shock to my system. I could just feel the food sitting heavy in my stomach. During rallies, I’m used to subsisting on simple tank bag food like jerky and protein shakes throughout the day, with an occasional bland sandwich thrown in for carbs. Keeping meals small, predictable and bland helps me stay alert on the road while avoiding stomach issues and extra restroom stops. I find it hard to leave unfinished food on my plate, but I was going to have to resist eating so much going forward, even if it looked and smelled appetizing.

 

I took the required photo of my MEALA bonus receipt with my rally flag back out at the bike, after ensuring I had all the required information noted on the receipt: rider number, bonus code, and bonus claim sequence number.

Back on I-80 west through Nebraska into a beautiful sunset. The gradually fading light of the long summer evening set off some cool cloud formations including this roll cloud.

Just before reaching Kearney, I turned south on NE 10, headed for the Kansas state line. But first I stopped in around 22:00 at the town of Franklin’s veteran’s memorial park, for bonus TAPFN, yet another M-60 Patton tank. That earned me 3 more armored asset points, putting me over the 10 I needed in that category for the first alien I’d be battling tomorrow morning.

By simply pivoting in another direction, I was also able to bag the fixed-wing bonus FBTFN, a T-33 Shooting Star plane, to nab myself seven points. It wouldn’t count against the particular alien I was targeting, but why not? Points are points. Upon quickly reviewing the photos and sending via the rally app, I noticed for the first time that our flag numbers were done in reflective paint. Very useful in low-light situations like this and thoughtful of the rallymaster to think of that detail!

Continuing south, I crossed into Kanas a few miles later, picking up US 281 in Smith Center. Not 10 miles further, just before the village of Portis, Google turned me onto a gravel county road for some reason. At this late hour, that seemed like a Bad Idea so I stopped to review the map. According to the GPS, if I simply continued on the highway, it would bring me through town and meet up with where Google was taking me anyway. I figured it was just trying to save a few seconds or something. I got back on the pavement and continued down 281 for another two miles only to hit a full road closure. Oh, that’s why.

Being a fairly main US highway, it surprised me that there weren’t any clear detour signs or instructions of how to get around this closure. Just a hard stop “go no further”. It was around 23:00 now and complete darkness enveloped the rural Kansas countryside around me. I knew I’d be making a bend southward in Portis, so I looked at a couple of gravel roads I’d passed over the last mile or so, but on the GPS and Google, they didn’t seem to cross the nearby Solomon River. So finally following Google original proposed advice, I backtracked to that larger gravel road and carefully eased on down it, my aux lights at maximum brightness, trying to keep my grip relaxed to get smoothly over the loose stuff.

Google had my back. This road did in fact cross me over the river via a small one lane bridge and then past some residential homesteads with dogs barking bloody murder as I rode by. This ended up being a several-mile loop to the west before finally coming back to paved 281 just south of Portis. A good reminder that sometimes out west, gravel roads ARE the only roads. I’m certainly seeing my share of them on the first day.

I fueled up in Luray before continuing south on (paved) county roads down to cross I-70 at Bunker Hill. A combination of US, state, and local roads zigzagged me the rest of the way south to the city of Great Bend, my chosen destination for tonight’s rest bonus. It’s a much bigger town than I’d been in all day, so even at 01:00 I had to watch myself in the traffic and patiently navigate all the traffic lights as I made my way to the Quality Inn on US 56.

After clocking in to the ZSLPA rest bonus via the app, check-in went quickly. They let me park the bike under the porte cochere when I mentioned I’d be leaving in just four hours. Getting in to my room, which was fine, I cleaned up, checked my routing once again, and re-read the rest bonus requirements. I still needed to get the bonus photo of my motorcycle with the rally flag (our only required documentation besides the app timer), but I wasn’t about to head outside and uncover the bike at this point. I’d take care of it before clocking out of the bonus and leaving. Then I got to bed with my alarm set for two hours.

More photos from today, including several people pics.