EastBayDave
Needs a job
Posts: 2245
|
posted July 05, 2003 06:39 AM
Cal 24 Endurance Rally / fundraiser report
BabyHuey (Geoff) and I participated in the Cal24 rally a coupla-three weekends ago. Had a great time riding together and contributed to a good cause.
EastBayDave posted the announcement on the board earlier this year about the rally being a fundraiser for Gary Kunich's family. Gary was killed by the BDC on Vasco road last year. He was an organizer for the previous Cal24 events and from what I gathered, talking with some of the riders that knew him personally, he was quite a guy. I was proud to able to provide some support to his family as a fellow rider. The rally raised nearly four thousand dollars for his family. Since each rider was required to donate 50 bucks and there were 38 riders registered, it can be surmised that many riders contributed more than the minimum ante.
The Cal24 followed the standard endurance motorcycle rally format: Start and finish are at the same location (Antioch in this case). Four checkpoints and five legs. We received route instructions for each leg upon arriving at the checkpoint. In the RI pack, there were directions to the next checkpoint and a list of questions about various sites along the route and bonus point locations. The scoring revolved around getting the correct answers to the questions and/or getting a picture or receipt at the bonus location. There was a specific window of time to arrive at the checkpoint. If you arrived too late, then the points you accumulated from the previous leg vaporized and you couldn't get points for the next leg because you didn't get the route instructions for the next leg.
Many times the bonus would be fairly easy to find or get to so the point value would low. If the location was remote, involved a lot of time or effort to find then the point value would be higher. The point value for the bonuses and questions rose as we got further along the route. There were some bonuses listed that were nearly impossible to reach in the allotted time. I think there was one that was absolutely impossible. Two guys attempted it and got time barred at the following C/P for their effort.
The event started on Friday with a rider's meeting to go over what the rally entailed. There was a lot of good info for both new and experienced rally riders. There were about 10 riders (including your correspondent) that had never participated in a 24 hour/1000 mile rally. In fact, the longest M/C ride I'd ever done in a day was probably 500 miles. That was the case for most of the other newbies, too. The organizer stated that we would probably be hooked on rallies after completing this one; he was right. More on this later.
On Saturday morning at 9am, we gathered in the Antioch Ramada Inn parking lot for the final words from the rallymaster and receipt of our rally packs. This included a list of emergency phone numbers, checkpoints, and the first leg bonuses. We had an hour to go over the list of checkpoints and bonuses to plot our strategy for the first part of the rally.
We took our info and headed over to the local Carrow's for breakfast and figgerin' out what in the heck we got ourselves into. The C/Ps looked like this:
1) Corner of Hwy 16 & 20. 15 miles west of Williams CA. Open 11am to 2pm
2) Condo on Lakeview Ave in South Lake Tahoe CA. Open 4pm to 7pm
3) Exxon station on Hwy 95 on the south side of Tonopah NV. Open 10pm to 1am
4) Dow Villa Motel in Lone Pine CA. Open 1am to 3pm
5) Finish Line: Ramada Inn back in Antioch. Open 8am to 10am
We planned on making a few of the bonuses on the first leg to get the idea of what that involved. The first question was: What year was the Windline on Sherman Island established? Since the Windline was just off the route and the sign on the outside of the building had the answer this was easy. The next question was: What movie poster is on the wall of 58 Main Street in Isleton? This one was worth 60 points but Isleton was 6 miles off of the route. We thought it would be easy money too so off we went down the levee in search of the easy points.
Well, it just so happened that Isleton was hosting some sorta biker/art&whine festival and the freakin' place was packed. We couldn't even get close to 58 Main Street without fighting through a huge crowd. Lost probably 30 minutes screwin' around there. We regrouped outside of Rio Vista, grabbed some points for details of Humphrey the Humpback's plaque and a hydrant in the parking lot of the Jelly Belly Factory and then headed off to the first C/P on the slab, blowing off about 5-6 other point opportunities. We arrived with about an hour to spare.
The next leg took us out Hwy 20 to Interstate 80 then to 89 @ Truckee and on to South Lake Tahoe. We opted to do the bonus loop that included some killer canyon riding past the New Melones Reservoir and then to Nevada City for what we thought would be easy points. Well, the bonus loop to New Melones worked out pretty well for another 6 bonuses but we got totally stymied in Nevada City. Probably lost 30 or 40 minutes blundering around there and left NC with an hour and twenty to get to SoLake.
It's about 50 miles to Truckee from NC and another 35 miles to SoLake and we had about 80 minutes to get there. Needless to say we didn't spend too much time going the limit. Probably didn't make sportbikin' any friends out there on the stretch from Truckee to SoLake. We arrived with 6 minutes to spare.
The checkpoint @ SoLake had an activity to force the riders to take a bit of a break: Paddling a kayak on the lake. Well, Geoff and I opted to do the paddle instead of the alternative 20 minute break. It only took 5 minutes to paddle and neither one of us ended up in the drink. In fact only one guy took a bath; the last rider into the CP! After that it was lube the chain, look at the route and head out. Because of being behind we decided that point on we would ignore the bonuses to ensure that we would make it to the CPs on time.
The route out of SoLake took us over 89 to Markleeville and then over Monitor Pass into Nevada. We left the CP at about 7:20 with the intent of having some fun on the twisties before the desolation of Hwy95 in Nevada. Before we could even get out of the neighborhood, a guy we had hooked up with, Mike, had his masterlink decide it had had enough of this lunacy and parted company with the rest of his chain. It was a real drag, 'cause we were having a great time riding together but at the same time probably the best place it could've happened as we discovered a few hours later. There is some real desolation at night in Nevada.
The ride over Ebbett's and Monitor were uneventful except for the absolutely spectacular scenery at sunset on the backside (that would be frontside for the Nevada readers) of Monitor. Well that and the great roads. Certainly one of the highlights of the ride.
After we crossed 395 and started out on the two lane blacktop to Tonopah, we started to put the hammer down to make up some of the time lost earlier. It is really cool to be out in the middle of nowhere, blasting down fairly deserted, straight, good surfaced roads. We covered the 150 miles from Yerington to Tonopah in about an hour and fifteen minutes and arrived with nearly an hour to spare.
The thing was, though we needed to be in Lone Pine, CA by 3am; 2.5 hours to cover over 200 miles. A repeat of our blast through the two lane to Bishop and 395 south got us within easy striking range of our goal, but somehow after several hours of going nearly double the national speed limit made us forget that they take speeding seriously in good 'ol California. One of California's finest presented Geoff, Ray (a rider we caught up to along the way) and me with Cal24 performance awards for 90 in a 65. Actually he cut us a bit of a break: We were probably going WAY faster than that and keepin' it within 25 of the limit meant that we could attend driver improvement school. This'll be my 10th time. I'm working on my second PhD.J
He didn't keep us too long and we made the CP with 6 minutes to spare. We picked up our route sheet and figured out that if we rode at a good clip we could make it back to Antioch with some time to spare. This leg included the best riding of the rally: Tioga Pass through Yosemite at sunrise under a full moon followed by Priest Grade out of Groveland. It got cold just north of Bishop and so we stopped to gas up for the final push and put on our electrically enhanced garments. It was 35 degrees from near the turnoff to Mammoth to the front side (backside for my Nevada readers) of Tioga. Thank God for electric vests and grips.
The ride through the park was incredible with virtually no traffic or ranger/cop presence. Ray followed us by 20 minutes through the park told us at the finish that he saw a coupla rangers during his ride, no doubt brought out from the donut shop by the previous 28 motorcycles that had invaded the park before him.
Coming out of the park we stopped at one of the vista points to remove some of the cold weather gear, pound yet another RockStar, and eliminate the previous one. Alan Barbic on his IronButt finishing ST1100 and his buddy Dave on a Yamaha GTS rode by just as we were getting ready to leave, so we hopped on it and chased them down. Actually, we probably wouldn't have caught them but for some traffic that slowed them down for a moment. Alan was an AMA national class roadracer in the 70s (qualified and raced at Daytona for several years) and is still a seriously fast rider. Now he's riding an ST1100 and I'm on my modded VFR so I shouldn't have much trouble keeping him in sight, right? Wrong.
It was amazing how fast he hustled that ST down Priest Grade. We had no traffic in front of us, the road has a very nice fresh asphalt surface and the company was unmatched. I learned some more about canyon carving that day. He made it look pretty easy. Even after 22 hours in the saddle.
Other than getting lost in Brentwood/Antioch, and scarin' the crap outta us that we would miss the finishing window, the rest of the ride was fairly uneventful. Road construction on Vasco Road to collect the bonus at Gary's accident site and our little directional mishap put us at the finish with the ubiquitous 6 minutes to spare and we could now claim to be SaddleSore1000 club members. Actually, completion of the ride qualified us for membership in the IronButt association and allows us to apply for registration to compete in the IronButt rally, a 10 day rally involving riding to 4 checkpoints at the four corners of the continental United States. Usually about 10000 miles in 10 days. Quite a challenge. Maybe I'll be posting about that someday.
I managed to finish in 10th place and Geoff in 14th without collecting any bonuses from SoLake to the finish. If we hadn't had trouble in Isleton and Nevada City, we would've done better. The cool thing is that just finishing felt like a great accomplishment.
The ride was an incredible amount of fun (except for the 2:30 am meeting with The Man on 395). I really love riding and this was a great opportunity to ride to test my limits of endurance. I would highly recommend anybody that loves to ride, take the 24 hour challenge. You would be surprised at how much you learn and the level of enjoyment. Not only that but you'll get to hang out with a bunch of fellow motorcycle addicts and nerds.
I'm hooked.
____________
Enjoy the ride!
02' ZRX1200
00' ZX12R sold
  
|
GreenGlenn
Expert Class
Ron Jeremy's Stunt Double
Posts: 370
|
posted July 06, 2003 12:23 PM
Great report and it sounded like lots of fun, but I dont think I could do it on the 12. Just a 500ish mile trip to Atlanta makes my ass cry.
Are you sure Redelk didnt ghost write this for you?
____________
If you love your bike, set it free. If it comes back to you....you probably highsided.
|
frEEK
Administrator
ummm... yeah
Posts: 9660
|
posted July 06, 2003 12:58 PM
i'l agree about not really wanting to do this on the 12, at least not with the stock seat. but really want to try it one day.
|
BobZx12
Parking Attendant
Posts: 28
|
posted July 06, 2003 04:29 PM
Congrats on the nice ride and welcome to the 'Iron Butt' family. I think that's 3 of us with 12's. Next step, the Bun Burner ?
Bob Daigle
SS1K, BBG1500, Blackfly 1600
all on the almighty 12
|
EastBayDave
Needs a job
Posts: 2245
|
posted July 06, 2003 05:01 PM
quote:
Are you sure Redelk didnt ghost write this for you?
Uh...GOZR could tell ya, it came from the LAB gang. I didn't write or ride it, just helped promote it. This was written by "Wickedspeed" (Paul.) Me do 24 hrs. in the saddle? Nope, no way....it does sound fun tho... 
____________
Enjoy the ride!
02' ZRX1200
00' ZX12R sold
|
frEEK
Administrator
ummm... yeah
Posts: 9660
|
posted July 06, 2003 06:11 PM
that was wicked? he didnt do it on the 1k i assume, it's down at the moment anyway if i'm not mistaken. guess he did it on the busa then? that would prolyl be a chunk more comfy than the 12, at least for someone of less than stratospheric stature like himself.
|
|
|
|
|
HOME
NEW TOPIC