The Final Analysis
Final Standings
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Jerry White wrote this report.
I think Eric Vallaincourt totally nailed “The Report” of this rally. His approach is what I’ll call the middle plan or efficient choice.
Philosophy
Now that it’s a few days after the rally and I’ve had time to digest my choices, performance, and do a little comparison I thought I’d try and share a few observations. First and foremost, My personality type is such that I would like to have run it with the same approach he did, but I think pulling it off like he did was uncommon in this rally. In fact, I guess there were three approaches people took:
- Conservative – Eight easy-to-get words not maxing out 8 letters each and not many with Z, Q, X, and J. Probably more K, P, and vowel words. These folks probably found themselves finishing easily and upsizing three of their words.
- Aggressive – These folks tried to use as many of the 64 letters as possible and go for words like ZZYZYVA and HO. If it was on a map or a GPS then it must have existed in real life and would be possible to find. These folks had the rude realization that some towns didn’t exist and were scrambling the whole event to make a minimum of their 5 original words.
- Efficient and Achievable – Like Eric his appetite more or less matched his ability. He was smart enough not to assume a town existed, gave himself a bit of a cushion, and got to spend more time riding and less time trying to make words fit. Also, his choice to arrive at the final checkpoint early, take a nap, and then attack final scoring relatively fresh was probably the smartest move of all.
Myself? 2…all the way! This was, by far, my most aggressive attempt at a rally, and I ultimately paid the price by missing a letter and dropping from a podium to a 17th place. Mind you, I don’t regret it one bit. I don’t usually do the aggressive thing and it was change of pace for me and learned volumes from it.
West or East?
As I sat in Friday evening trying to come up with 8 words and decide where to go and what cities to get I quickly surmised that Ely and rural Nevada was exactly the wrong area to get lots of letters. I needed to go to metropolitan areas with lots of little burgs.
Two areas jumped out at me as obvious. Salt Lake City to the East and Reno to the West. There really wasn’t any population centers achievable to the North nor the South..except Vegas and not many burgs down there. I knew SLC having went to school there years ago and also from the Utah 1088. It didn’t seem rich with Z’s, but had J’s and even a Q over there….and lots of nearby towns to pick up filler vowels. I decided fairly early that would be a place to go.
The other area of Reno was a bit tougher. It was a smaller area than SLC, but had several corridor options including south through Carson City towards California. I saw Topaz and Topaz Lake and it seemed natural. Markleeville and a Q at a cove. There was also Shurz, Hazen, and Nixon, and it seemed obivous.
In the back of my mind on the West swing was also Sacramento, but it was nebulous at best. Maybe if I had time I could head that way or search on my GPS once I was in the area. So, at that point I clinched the West and East run, but then had to decide which to do first.
The Fallon checkpoint essentially made it a 12 hour leg followed by a 20 hour leg so my choices seemed to be whether I could go Ely to SLC to Fallon in the 12 hours and still get the needed towns. It seemed a bit iffy to me so I opted to head to Reno first. Highway 50 was fast and other than a few stops on the way I could have time to do more than Nixon and Topaz.
The Hitch in My Giddyup
It turns out my front tire had a different opinion on the whole ride. It was a wobbily bitch between 25 and 50 to the point that twisties scared the bejeezus out of me. And at FJR nominal speeds it had a little bounce to it. It bugged me and the thought of losing that tire concerned me enough to stop in Reno and spend two hours have the balance checked and ultimately changed.
I’d like to say the dealership that shall remain nameless started out stellarly by believing it was an emergency to me and checking balance, but when they came to me and said it was out 1/4 ounce and was put back together I had a cow. My instruction had been to “check the balance” and if out a bunch to rebalance. If close I wanted to talk about a new tire.
They insisted the tire was sound with only 1000 miles on it, but I knew better. I rode it down the street and it did it’s scary shimmy until 50 mph and knew the Avon Storm was a bad one. Avon’s are great tires, but they do seem to have a clinker now and again. Returning to the shop our relationship went sour quickly as they thought I was nuts and servicing people with appointments was more important, but reluctantly put on a new Michelin Pilot Road…even as I paid top dollar for it and the service.
They even thought they’d get snippy and put notes on the service sheet that I was running too much weight on the bike, head bearing was loose (mind you I had retorqued it to spec just before leaving home), and that the new tire likely wouldn’t fix the issue. As for weight I’d gone through and added special supsension components to the bike for my fat ass and extra gear….and have learned over 70,000 miles when a tire is going bad or not thank you.
As I left the dealership $240 lighter I was pleasantly validated within two blocks that the tire was butter smooth. No more Avons for me. I did chuckle to myself that I told them for their great service they could keep the nearly brand new tire. Heh, they’re going to love that turgid piece of defective crap when they mount it up.
Finishing Leg 1
As I left Reno I headed South towards Carson City and snagged what I could. The money was really to score Topaz and Topaz Lake. The two small burgs close together concerned me though…and I never did find a picture adequate to prove I was in Topaz. My GPS pointed me to a post office that was a field nowhere near anything but a single farmhouse.
This area was extra important personally to me because I had just read a book on the history of T.B. Rickey, that was huge landowner (nearly all of Antelope Valley) and cattle rancher in the area, and Senator of Nevada. He’s my stepfather’s grandfather and was also responsible for the building of Topaz Lake
I found after the ride that after my unsuccessful hunt for the Topaz Post Office, I did score one of the three additional things we were to get to avoid a penalty. Prime Cowpie. And it turns out that road I found the cowpie was smack dab in the middle of Rickey’s Ranch.
Small world.
After Topaz I worked my way back into Nevada and started thinking about Yerrington and the all-important Schurz. After I bagged those I gassed up in Fallon, headed east to the middle of nowhere for a checkpoint, and started thinking about the next leg.
What the Old West Was
When I rolled into Middlegate I was seriously struck at the scene. An oasis of a bar in the middle of nowhere, rustic beyond belief, and a shady spot in the afternoon sun. If there weren’t hundreds of thousands of dollars of hi-tech rally bikes parked there I could TOTALLY imagine horses tied to posts, drinking, and eating oats after a long ride from the next oasis.
And it wasn’t just as LD riders, but also a large contingent of Harley riders tossing back a beer, and a gaggle of dirtbike riders barbequing up in the early evening.
The smell and feel of the Old West hung in the air like I had never felt in my life. It was high-def full-color Spaghetti Western come to life. See this link of some great pictures.
Leg 2 – To the Land of Zion But No Z’s
It’s curious that the Land of Zion has no Z’s in any town names. I mean it’s really curious. There’s Nephi, Satiquin, and Jordan…all names that feature prominently in the book of Mormon and have cities in Utah, but Zion doesn’t. Weird.
I tried my hand at darts and in my 3 practice throws scored well over 60 points alone. However, I flailed miserably with my 6 real darts and only scored like 45 points. No extra Z for me….I settled on an X…which would be wasted later on.
I rolled west out of Middlegate lamenting having to go through Fallon for the third time in this rally, but it was a necessary evil to catch Lovelock, Imlay, and Winnemucca for their prized k, y, w, and vowel marrow. I settled into a good routine of I-80, stop, picture, move on. And I repeated this until I couldn’t ride any further…which conveniently was about 3 a.m. near the Great Salt Lake at a rest area.
The cement picnic table looked hard so I chose the soft grass nearby and began a planned 90 minute sleep cycle. About 45 into it I awoke to a sprinkler in the face. Bolting upright I was drenched and the sprinkler had been on for some time…so I must have been tired. 
I went to the other side of the rest area and salvaged another 45 minutes of sleep and awoke to the pre-dawn hours.
Very refreshed I needed to plan my strategy through the SLC area and opted for a nearby McDonalds and my first meal of the rally (unless you include some granola and jerky from the day before). Scouring the map I knew traffic would be light in the early a.m. and got ready for a berry picking exercise. SLC would be easy and I decided that I needed to be to Nephi no later than 10 a.m. Even conservative speeds would get me from there to Ely by 1 p.m. and if I wicked it up I could be there an hour early.
The highlights were West Jordan and South Jordan. Two big letters within 5 minutes of each other. I also scored Santiquin. Once to Nephi I headed west, picked up a couple extra easy ones in Leamington, Delta, and Hinckley, and then twisted the throttle to the open desert of Highway 50. One more picture at the Utah sign and a small bonus of Baker after hooking up with Brad Warwick, a fellow FJR rider and Nevada Highway Patrol. We enjoyed our last 60 miles to Ely at nominal speeds.
Rolling into Ely I actually forgot to get the town…which was unfortunate because the Y would have helped me later because my Yerrington photo was out of focus and disallowed. The presence of mind one would have had to realize this while in the rally was absolutely impossible though…for me…or mere mortals. I add it after the fact as an example of how small mistakes on an agressive plan can hammer you.
Ignorant of this goof I enjoyed getting a 6 pack of beer though and rolled into the hotel with about 40 minutes to spare.
Scoring – Like Watching the Twit Olympics
If you want funny and sad at the same time…watch 40 something riders spend 32 hours in the hot sun on bikes and then come back and try and make important decisions about scrabble letters. It’s seriously painful to watch unless you’re an event organizer and enjoy the drama of seeing people’s brain actually seize up and smoke.
Again, the smart money would have been to arrive a couple hours early, take another nap, and then get up to finally assemble your photos and letters.
I didn’t take the smart money.
I took a couple of minutes to shuck my clothes and drink a little water, but I tried to sort out my letters quickly. A helmet fire quickly ensued. This paper represents the twists and turns I tried to make a round peg to fit in a square hole.
Suffice it to say that I’m lucky to have snagged 7 words. Although my biggest word was disallowed…I could have easily made more mistakes and eroded my grip on the place I did. This aggressive approach to a rally was a bit new for me and I’m not saying it’s me in the future or that I’m going to a more moderate approach, but it was certainly educational…and a heck of a lot of fun!
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During the Rally
I’ll also be trying out my new SPOT GPS transmitter and you can follow along. I will be commuting to Ely on Thursday, departing in the rally on Saturday morning at 5 a.m. PDT, May 31st and returning 32 hours later on Sunday at 1 p.m.
Steve Hobart is posting photos of the event regularly here. ————–
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Sunday, 20:00
ZZYZVYA!
With the exception of my GPS transmitter there was an e-embargo for this event. They actually sealed our laptops with a special tamper-proof tape and told in no uncertain terms not to used computers.
We just got done with the banquet and I placed 17th out of about 45. More about it later probably of how I might have been on the podium but I screwed up on my top scoring 600+ point word ZYZZYVA. I had traveled to Topaz Lake, Hazen, and Shurz for those, but didn’t put a “v” on the original sheet so it was disallowed. The scorer felt bad, but I 100% told him to do what he thought was the right thing. Warchild was the award presenter and did note that had I not goofed I would have been on the podium.
Other FJR’s did very well…in fact First, Second, and Fourth.
Must…..sleep….now. Long ride back home early in the morning.
Friday, 13:00
Ran through tech. inpsection and did my odo check. I’m in and chilling. I did try to scare myself by losing my primary keys…and just had that unsettled feeling running my spares. …I ended up finding my keys in my sidebags in the room so my stress level went down.
I also had a wheel weight that was slipping off because of the area I placed it was creating a sideload force as it spun around and was going to fling off at a bad time. I got a new one from the local dealer and it’s much happier when I placed it on a flatter spot of the rim.
Greg Marbach, however, is freaking out a bit. He called at 7 a.m. waking me up and said his high and low beams aren’t working…which is no good if you want to ride at night. He’s due in the next few hours and I’m sure we’ll help him tear things apart and try and fix things. Hopefully, it’s something simple and not a relay…because I already checked at the local Yamaha dealership and none in stock.
The shirts are out and feature a Scrabble theme on back–giving me a hint and prediction that it will be something about forming routes where you have to visit a town that starts with W, then the next with O, third with R….and you see where this is going. Then how many times can you spell the word “WORD” in 32 hours. Looking at the back of the shirt one gets different values for different letters. Perhaps they give a list of locations starting with those letters in Nevada, California, Utah, Arizona, and Idaho and we see how many points we can get.
Thursday, 19:30
Had a nice prime rib dinner with Doug Chapman, my riding partner on Leg 1 of the IBR last year and came back to a bunch more people in the parking lot including a gaggle of FJR riders. Zelenz has returned with his tank coffin and tail sarcophogus. (I’ll post a pic later).
Thursday, 14:48
To McCranium: The loitering around Mountain Home….was breakfast….no LEO conversation.
Thursday, 13:15
I pulled in about 11:30 making good time after Hagerman, ID. You gotta love Nevada! Had a bite to eat and the parking lot is pretty empty. No Dale…I’m guessing I leap frogged him or he’s scouting on the way down.
Don Moses pulled in from Texas and Rick Martin from Pontiac, IL after 1600+ miles.
Two FJR’s and one KLR in the parking lot….I would expect more as the afternoon wears on.
I just checked my SPOTtrack and it seems to have worked pretty well. The interface is a little kludgy with the gaint pushpins, but it works. Curious thing is to see the spacing change of the 10 minute reports when I get into Nevada. Heh.
Thursday, 01:40
I’m outta Pasco. SPOT will be active and I’ll be riding to Ely. Haven’t decided if I’m riding the slab to Twin Falls and cutting down through Jackpot or riding 395 to Burns and then try Denio as a new road.
I’ll get to decide by Pendleton.
Background
My first competitive ride of the season is Saturday, May 31st. The Word! rally promises to be a bit different than others I’ve been in.
For starters, it begins and ends in Ely, Nevada….which I’ve come to learn is a town in the middle of nowhere, at the crossroads of many of Nevada’s most spectacular highways, but still a big enough to host a decent buffet. I rode the White Pine Fever event in 2006 and although I won’t share specific shenanigan details …I can say that it was eating like sugared cereal for 24 hours straight. Not very healthy, a helluva lot of fun though, you have a headache after you finally stop, and you promise yourself you will never ever do it again.
Also, suffice it to say I learned to like Area 51 and the Extraterrestrial Highway so much that I did seven laps that day. The 196 mile stretch from Ash Springs to Round Mountain has one stop sign and no towns between it. It’s nirvana for a road devouring sport-touring bike.
One stretch near Rachel is ethereal in it’s perspective and parabola effect. If one were to sit at Rachel the afternoon might sound something like this.
However, this ride won’t be so much about miles….I think. 1148 is listed as a minimum and I have this sneaking suspicion high miles may be penalized. This one likely will be about routing efficiency and ability to prevail in traditional manly type activities (aka shooting large caliber weapons).
Of the items I need to bring include a crisp dollar bill, an unused Trojan Magnum condom of the extra-large variety, various highlighters, pens, maps, calculator, and a notebook. One fellow rider has captured the essence of the trip in this picture.
It’s also suggested that more competitive riders bring Gazetteers of Nevada and adjoining states…..which is entirely retro. The last time I bought a Gazetteer I’m not sure Washington had celebrated it’s first Centennial and I have since pretty much abandoned the things in favor of the very convenient and dynamic 2730. After visiting Barnes & Noble, G.I. Joe’s, and the Outdoor Sportsmen I found my credit card $130 heavier and will end up wrapping them carefully to return if I don’t end up using them.
This is all in addition to suggestion of bringing what is now rally-standard electronic gear of a laptop, mapping software, and GPS…so it almost seems like a conflict is brewing. Dare they confiscate our electronic warfare gadgets and require us to go old school?
If there’s any event that would do more than threaten this…this would be the one. Let’s see……the features organizers including Dale Wilson, Brian Roberts, and Chickey. If it didn’t include the relatively seratonin-balanced personalities of Don Moses and HMarc Lewis I’d be making a dooty in my pants.
Regardless, I’ll be prepared and as an homage to the 2005 and earlier IBR have a used Marlboro cigarette ready butt to measure map miles just in case.
