Swift Current SK – Hollister ID
Tues Jun 25, 2024
(~1618 miles)

If, on the other hand, in the midst of difficulties we are always ready to seize an advantage, we may extricate ourselves from misfortune.

― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

After three hours in the rack, I awoke with new purpose and a monster three days of riding ahead of me. I felt charged up and more focused than ever, due to my new plan and the knowledge that I had the freedom to ride my heart out over the next two days without an enforced rest bonus looming tonight. This is the type of challenge I relish while riding in LD rallies. Let’s see if I can actually get this route ridden now, limited only by mind, body, and the clock.

Unfortunately, things started right off with delays getting out of town. I’d pushed my alarm time a bit later to give myself as much sleep as possible, so was about 10 minutes late in getting ready to leave. I was so eager to get moving that I almost forgot to get my rest bonus photo and submit it! It was a chilly morning in the low 50s out here on the plains. My tire pressure reading seemed to be a few psi low for both wheels, so I stopped in again at the gas station across the highway to top it off, just to be safe. The extra minutes were worth the peace of mind, avoiding any preventable issues in the middle of rural Saskatchewan.

Finally leaving Swift Current north on Highway 4 around 02:20 (some 20 minutes behind schedule), the dark solitude of the big empty prairie enveloped me and the bike. There was some natural light from the fullish moon for a while, which makes for a prettier nighttime ride when you can see a bit more than your own bubble of headlights. I was now riding at higher latitudes than I’d ever been to before, so that was rather exciting and the sense of exploration added to my good mood. Cell service remained spotty, but near Rosetown I had enough signal to take a brief call from Char, giving her a summary of my latest big blunder as well as my new plan before the signal was lost again to the vastness.

Having reviewed the weather over coffee this morning, I know a large pattern is rolling across central Alberta right now. It would be directly in my path as I headed further west into another new-to-me province, so I was expecting to get wet today. For now, it was just cold, dropping down to the mid 40s at the coldest point. I was bundled up comfortably with my heated liner switched on and rocking my Rukka lobster mitts. Hard to believe I was riding in near triple-digit heat just a couple days ago!

About 180 miles of dark droning northbound across the prairie, I experienced only one scary near-miss with a confused deer that didn’t know which way he wanted to cross the road. I reached the town of Battleford and finally turned west off route 4 onto Highway 16. These central provinces are impressive in their scope – almost three hours riding north through so much empty land plus what I rode yesterday and I’m barely a third of the way up Saskatchewan’s total length! Being just past 05:00, the sun had recently risen, though it was quite cloudy and grew more so as I covered the 80 miles remaining to the provincial border with Alberta.

“Thought you loose on a Hilltop next to the road”

I’d like to claim I waxed creative during my dark morning journey this morning and purposefully composed this line of poetry. But alas, this mystifying tidbit is what my voice-to-text app translated into my notes at some point. Similar to the popular IBR voicemail transcriptions published over the past few years, it can sometimes be an amusing puzzle to figure out exactly what I said.

Reading it later, I couldn’t make heads nor tails of it. What the hell? 😂 Char asked why I was chuckling, so I read it aloud, telling her I felt certain that only the first three words were wrong, she suggested “Saw two moose?”  YES! I DID see two moose shortly after sunrise up on a grassy hill by the highway. And I’d completely forgotten about it. It was so weird seeing them out on the plains like that, with not a tree in sight!

Anyway, at some point after the rain began, I realized I hadn’t plugged in my Sena headset, which is usually charging from a battery pack while I ride. Unfortunately, the cord must have gotten a bit wet when dangling against my coat and the unit wouldn’t charge when plugged in now on the fly. I’d accidentally packed a broken unit as my spare before leaving home, so that was no use.

Once the battery was dead, it felt even more oppressive riding through the steady cold rain. I felt cut off without the ability to communicate verbally, especially when Nancy texted me again to remind me about submitting the tank bonus from yesterday (which I’d already tried to re-send). She also tried to call me at one point until I explained about the dead helmet comms. I would end up trying to fix the headset dilemma off and on over the next four hours. I did finally manage to get the tank photo sent through, and Nancy confirmed receipt of that plus the rest bonus submission as well, easing my mind greatly that at least I wasn’t losing points due to technical difficulties.

To add to the electronics issues, after a fuel stop in Lloydminster at the border with Alberta (another new province!), the cord of my inReach satellite tracker had became loose or wet, causing the unit to turn off for a bit, which it does upon loss of power. Once I recognized the problem, I quickly shot off a text to rally staff and got it tracking again by just pulling the cord out for now so it could run on batteries. Luckily, Char confirmed later that my cell phone kept tracking to Spotwalla via the Bubbler app, so I’d be able to show that to the rallymaster if needed later on.

Despite the weather and electronics snafus, traffic remained light along Highway 16, and I made good time. I gradually came up behind and overtook another rally rider on an RT (I think), but I couldn’t make out the license plate jurisdiction. At least their bike looked the part and who else would be out riding in this god-awful weather? We rode within sight of each other for many miles, but then I think they turned north on Highway 41 to head for the alien bonus. I hadn’t seen anyone on the group Spotwalla page taking my route, so this rider was probably coming over from Winnipeg with enough military points already built up.

I, on the other hand, still had some requisitioning to do, shooting west another 70 miles to Edmonton, needing 25 fixed-wing asset points before coming back to do battle. The rain finally began to abate as I broke out the back side of the weather system. Traffic was busier as I approached the city, but still moved along until I passed the loop road to dive straight into the downtown area. Speed limit dropped and there were several construction zones funneling traffic into fewer lanes that slowed things down.

The exit onto 121st Street was packed with cars as well, stop and go down to Kingsway, then about a mile down to the Alberta Aviation Museum. Daylight bonus FCVEA (25 points) is a CF-101 Voodoo jet plane mounted next to a nice big empty parking lot. This completes the strike force I’ll need to destroy the big alien base two hours back to the east.

After getting my photo from the correct angle and packing things back up, I heard someone shouting something through my earplugs. As I mounted the bike, I saw a man approaching me from the street. In just the short ride from the highway to here, I’d already noticed several people standing at the stoplights panhandling, so that’s the first thing that crossed my mind. I was definitely on public property and couldn’t think of a valid reason I had to stop and interact with this fellow, yet I waited for a few beats in case it was just someone being friendly.

I couldn’t catch what he was saying, but the overall vibe I got was that he wanted something from me, so I just said that I had earplugs in and couldn’t hear what he was saying. As I started to ride away, he made a motion as if to grab my arm or something, but too late, I was moving and didn’t look back. Weird. Dude, if you really were just a local motorcyclist and wanted to say hi and are reading this post, sorry man, I was just too fried and had places to be! 😅

Time check: I was running a half hour behind plan at this point, due to my late departure from Swift Current and the heavy traffic here in Edmonton. Getting back out to the highway was a bit easier, retracing my path, and I picked my way back east without too much difficulty, clearing out of the city and now chasing behind the rain for the next hour and change.

A few miles before Vegreville, Highway 16 dips south so I veered onto provincial highway 631 on a more direct line east several miles to Highway 36 northbound. From here it was another 50 miles of well-paved arrow-straight rural highway zig-zagging north and east up to the bustling little town of St. Paul on Highway 29. Passed through more big farmlands, but now more trees and small hills as well, so a very pretty ride with the sun out and blue skies poking through again. Plenty of passing zones, but I hit a couple of one-lane work zones with flagmen that slowed me down a bit, and Iost several more minutes off my schedule.

St. Paul seemingly pops up out of nowhere amidst the wide rolling tracts of low woodlands and agricultural properties. It’s situated on the north shore of Therien Lake and apparently on the edge of a big outdoorsy region called the Lakeland region. A perfect spot for invading alien forces to establish a forward base of their own, far from large population centers. Just short of what looks like the main business strip, I turned right at the corner of a large municipal park, already spotting the UFO Landing Pad for bonus ALAND at a whopping 12,004 points.

The rally book photo shows an alien ship parked in front of the landing pad with three of the little bastards looking smug. However, that prop (a painted plywood placard) was nowhere to be found, so it took me a couple of minutes to verify I was looking at the correct landmark, even asking a nice lady tending the flowerbeds if this was the only landing pad-type structure in the park(!). You just never know on a rally.

After getting the shot and submitting the bonus, I sent a text to Nancy to confirm the photo would suffice without the aliens. Then I thought of checking my email since I appeared to have good data service in town. An email from the rallymaster sent earlier confirmed that the alien ship was missing and to just get the landing pad from the same angle. Sweet!

Now I backtracked 50+ miles down two-lane Highway 36 to route 16, with a stop to fuel up in Two Hills along the way. I remember having to go inside the station here for some reason and wait at the register while an older local gentleman helped his small granddaughter pick out the ice cream she wanted, which they served from behind the counter.

At Highway 16, I just kept going south on 36. It was just a long straight shot down to the US border. For a long while, I seemed to be splitting lines of alien sentry stations disguised as high-tension electrical towers on both sides of the highway, for miles and miles.

The weather grew nicer by the mile, finally reaching up into the 60s and allowing me to turn off my heated gear. After blowing forcefully into my headset’s USB port a few times, it had dried out enough to start charging again. I was finally able to take a call from Char around 15:45 local time. Being out of voice contact since early this morning, I was eager for human contact to distract me from the flat terrain, and just rambled on about my entire day and what I had planned.

In Warner, I finally hit big Highway 4, a divided four-lane slab that brought me the final 20 miles to the border. I pulled off into the small border village of Coutts to remove my earplugs, get my passport handy, etc. Entry into Sweetgrass, Montana was quick and painless, so just like that I was back stateside, now on I-15 in Montana. With a lack of public facilities over the past few hours, I stopped for a much-needed bathroom break at the rest area, just past the border station

Then it was just grip-it-n-rip-it, heading south on I-15 enjoying those glorious high speed limits for which Montana is known. I fueled up in Shelby, eight minutes ramp to ramp, not bad considering I had to cross under the highway. The ST ate up the miles through the hilly steppe landscape, passing exits for tiny railroad villages like Conrad and Brady before finally arriving at another middle-of-nowhere community called Dutton. Just one block from the interstate, I pulled onto a small side street next to the local American Legion. Waving to the small kids playing across the street, I hoofed it across the grass with my ammo can and phone, circling the building to the F-104 Starfighter jet plane that I’d seen on my approach. This is daylight-only bonus FCGDM (20 points).

The bonus had been an “easy-off” the highway, but not so “easy-on”. After entering the short on-ramp, I realize there are actually a few cars stopped at the top of the ramp by a young woman in flagman’s garb. It seems a road crew is paving the right lane of the interstate right in front of the ramp, but had neglected to plan the work with any sort of bypass for traffic entering from the ramp. I roll past a couple cars up to the young lady and asked how long this delay might be? Receiving an answer to the tune of 20-30 minutes (WTAF!) I asked about how to get around it, but she had no idea, not being familiar with the local roads. OK, there is literally nothing around here and plenty of open space, how can they not have planned some way to let traffic by while they completed this work?

Zooming around on my GPS screen, I couldn’t see any other roads to use as a detour to get around this.  It later turned out there is one road that parallels the interstate all the way down to the next town, but it’s hard to see on a map unless you know it’s there. Meanwhile, a thought occurred: I asked the woman if the other southbound lanes were still open and she confirmed they were. Aha!

Wheeling the bike around, I glided back down the short ramp past several more vehicles queued up (why didn’t these locals know about that other road?) and crossed under the overpass to the northbound side. About a half mile north and I was able to reverse direction headed south again via a cut-through, waving to the flag-lady as I passed the exit and paving equipment, back up to full speed. Solving problems!

Another 30 miles or so and I rolled into the biggish city of Great Falls, Montana, exiting onto US 89, which cuts straight east through town. Enduring a good two miles of busy evening shopping traffic, with stoplights and strip-malls galore, I pulled up by a municipal park containing the F-102 Delta Dagger for bonus FCDGM (20 points).

Right as I pulled up to the curb, I received a call from Nancy. I told her I was at a bonus, so it was a very quick call. There had been some staff discussion about my denied AWIEL bonus back in Wisconsin. They must have felt pretty sorry for me and had tried to come up with a path for me to claim those points, while still respecting the rules of the game and fairness. Since I’d done the necessary miles but just used the fixed-wing card with insufficient points (10), they presented me the option of swapping in my naval Fire Support card, worth (15, 15, 15) asset points, in my bonus sequence just prior to AWIEL.

At the time, I couldn’t grasp this idea at first. I mean, how could that possibly be fair? I mean – I made a really dumb mistake, didn’t properly read the rally book, and so I should suffer for that (all still very true!). This is the rally mentality I’ve been brought up in, so to speak. Once you fuck up, that’s it. She explained how they’d come up with this solution, but it took me a few hours of thinking through it before I could rationalize it. Meanwhile, I told Nancy the answer was probably thanks but no thanks, because I already have plans to use that naval card as part of my routing strategy tomorrow. She understood, but told me to let them know soon if I decided otherwise and we disconnected.

Once I had time to consider how these Lone Star rallies work with claiming bonuses through the app, this all made a lot more sense and here’s my take. As noted before, the real-time entry of bonus information in the LDX app is more about scoring process efficiency rather than being the final word for how we claim bonuses. If there was no app, I’d be collecting bonuses and claiming wildcards in whatever order I desired until the next checkpoint, so I could have easily substituted the naval card after the fact, since you don’t actually have to ride anywhere to claim them. The key thing is that I noticed my own mistake, so they were pointing out that I could use a “virtual eraser” on my claim sheet and enter another bonus code. The rallymasters have always encouraged riders to just call them with any problems or to discuss any  changes/mistakes with bonuses submitted through the app.

My mind whirled with the possibilities. Without sitting down for another planning session, I knew that I couldn’t possibly change such a large variable in the heat of the moment. There is not much time for such a pause, since I’m planning to ride through the night tonight in order to make my new plan work, but I’ll take a look during my upcoming meal bonus.  I so appreciated the gesture at least, and how much empathy this rally staff shows for their riders. They didn’t have to spend time reaching out with a solution like that, with all the other issues and side-dramas likely going on in the rally. But they clearly want all the riders to do well and have a great time riding these rallies, and I could feel their support, deserved or not.

After collecting the bonus, I turned my attention to finding a restaurant for my daily meal bonus while I’m here in a population center, before it gets too late. An Applebee’s came up on Google Maps pretty close by, so I punched that in and followed the navigation line.

When it started taking me away from the main drag, I actually did like 3-4 u-turns while trying to decide if I wanted to ride deeper into the city to find this place. More minutes lost in indecision. Clearly I needed a short break, and ultimately decided to just do it since I’m already here. The restaurant is actually just a few blocks off 89, down close to the Missouri River. It’s a nice spot, with a view of the river from the parking lot, and still doing a pretty good evening business at 19:30.

The Chicken Caesar salad had been safe enough to eat at the last Applebee’s, so I ordered up another one here, limiting myself to a few healthy forkfuls so that I wouldn’t get too sleepy during my planned sortie down towards Nevada this evening. I quickly reviewed the options for swapping out the naval card per the rally staff’s suggestion, but as I’d suspected, it would throw the rest of my plan into disarray.

So I reviewed the weather (clear skies ahead) and the group Spotwalla while I sat and ticked away the minutes. It looked to me like most of the riders who’d beaten me to the Alberta alien had pushed on west towards a large alien bonus in the Seattle area. Always fun to guess what everyone else is up to!

I was out at the bike and ready to go a couple minutes early, so after documenting my stop for the MEALG bonus, I stretched out and took a couple shots of the bike and the river on this beautiful evening while waiting for the bonus timer to expire.

Riding quickly back to I-15, I continued south, calling up Char for a final chat before she retired for the evening, bearing in mind the two hour time difference still between us. Sunset is at an insanely late 21:27 tonight, so I still got to enjoy another two hours or so with at least some light in the sky. I was grateful to be able to discern the gorgeous scenery as I passed Cascade and went from the plains into the mountains at last. It was golden hour and I wanted desperately to stop a few different times to get photos, but I just wouldn’t allow myself – still running about 30 minutes behind schedule. Tick tock.

Night settled in as I neared the junction with I-90 in Butte. I stuck with I-15 as it merged west with 90 for a bit and then split to continue south. Around 03:00 In the town of Dillon, I exited for a fuel/restroom stop, about 15 minutes ramp to ramp, so moving a bit slowly now. Another 60-70 miles riding through the dark mountain valleys and at last I came out onto the welcoming flatness of Idaho. While I’d enjoyed the short stint through the mountains, after dark and having ridden all day long, I’m all about the flat straight roads! Down through Idaho Falls and Blackfoot, I finally left I-15 behind in Pocatello, taking the short(ish) I-86 connector highway west to join I-84.

Taking the I-84BL exit for Burley, I crossed the Snake River (at least the map says I did) and arrived at the entrance to a small municipal airport. The Huey helicopter that was once here for bonus RCUBI (25 points) is gone, replaced with another T-33 Shooting Star plane. However, this had been mentioned in the rider meeting slide show and the bonus is still classified as a rotary-wing asset. The rallybook actually had the correct photo too.

It was around 03:00 by now. I was reaching the end of the alertness afforded by the last 5-Hour Energy I’d drunk a few hours ago, so I’d need to find someplace to nap soon. I pulled over into the Loves truck stop before getting back on the interstate to use the bathroom and splash some water on my face to wake up a bit. As I left, I realized I’d forgotten to re-insert my earplug. I pulled over quickly by the lot entrance, removed my glove and took care of that before hitting the slab once more.

Another 30 miles down 84, I exited on ID 50 just before Twin Falls and zig-zagged south of the city to pick up US 93 southbound towards Nevada. The wind had been picking up and there was a lot of fine particle dust in the air – not sure if it was from some type of mineral processing plant or just a typical natural phenomenon, but it definitely made it tougher to see down the road and left a bad taste in the mouth. I definitely needed to get some rest now, so when I spotted a gas station in the small community of Hollister, I pulled in to seek out a dark corner of their parking lot. As luck would have it, at the rear of the lot was a small town park with some picnic tables… perfect!

Setting my alarm for a half hour or so, with the smell of dust heavy in the air, I lay down on one of the tables and drifted off into a light doze.