BITE Rally - Day 4
Day 4 - St Cloud MN to Statesville NC, 1342 Miles
States Visited: MN, WI, IL, IN, KY, WV, OH, VA, NC
Today was the day that everything fell apart. From the blog perspective, Day four covers all of Thursday and the first half of Friday until getting back to the hotel.
The morning started off easy enough. With Donahue H-D not opening until 09:00, there wasn't a rush to get up and out the door in a hurry. The dealership was only 2.5 miles form the hotel, so my plan was to be there right when they opened.
Yesterday was an easy ride, getting 7 hours sleep at the hotel in Streetsboro OH before heading out, and only having one bonus stop to worry about. Looking at the route for today, some 1550 miles planned, I was starting to have second doubts. If the H-D shop doesn't open until 09:00, and I expected this wouldn't be my fastest stop, that would put me back on the route around 09:30 .... 09:30 Central that is, effectively 10:30 Eastern. I had to be back in NC by 14:00, so essentially I had another 28 hours to go ... less time that we had for the first leg, but with more miles.
Re-evaluating stops, I only had three planned for Thursday. The first being the H-D dealership of course, then a stop in Alton, IL, and finally a stop out on the Natchez Trace down south of Nashville, TN. I quickly decided to toss out the Alton stop, it was only worth 28 points, and not really worth the diversion off route to snag it, I didn't think. Finally I started taking a hard look at the TN stop. The GPS was indicating that I would be there around 02:00 ... right in my usual "getting sleepy" time. Making this stop would net me 1001 points, but was it really worth the miles to bag it? My biggest fear was that someone had found a way to snag a couple of the +15,000 point stops, in which case this leg wouldn't mean anything for me. After weighing back and forth, I decided to stick with the plan to just make sure I finished, knowing that I needed to work on multi-day pace. Pulling TN out of the route would bump my route down to more like 1100 miles, and had me slated to get into Statesville around 08:00. Crazy early, but it would meet the revised goals I had after what I believed was a botched leg 1.
Just after 09:00, I pulled into the parking lot for Donahue H-D. Brett was already in the office ... I had tried to give him a heads up the day before, but he was there regardless. Got in, snagged my picture with one of the two mascots they have at the dealerships ... a pair of pigs since Harley has the Hog association. Brett knew I was on the clock, so kept conversation short and I was back on the road by 09:15. Traffic was a little more dense for once, since it was still Thursday morning rush hour as I took the loop around Minneapolis/St. Paul and back in to Wisconsin. Just as the night before, the police presence was still pretty strong across Wisconsin.
After having driven through Chicago on a more direct route yesterday, I decided to try and steer clear of Chicago proper, while also avoiding toll roads as much as possible. I opted instead to take I-39 south down to Normal, IL, and then start heading back east. It was not long after I had connected with I-74 that I pulled off at a rest stop to re-evaluate things.
One of the things I was re-evaluating was my seat ... the Airhawk seat pad I had bought right before the Cal24 ... it wasn't doing me any good. I lasted longer this time, without the sheepskin pad over the Airhawk. As I sat on the food picnic table, I decided to give the bead-rider cover that Norm Grills had talked me into buying a try. I had brought it along with me to try on the way home from Statesville back to Dallas, expecting that it wouldn't work well enough ... was I in for a surprise!!
Second, on my periodic check of the cell phone, I saw that Jim Owen had also made the Donahue stop, but much later in the afternoon. Why was he so late??? I got that sinking feeling knew he had bagged some other big bonus, and now he had grabbed his second. About the same time, I got an IM from my friend Curt Gran, letting me know that after all that happened on leg 1, I had still managed to turn in enough points to claim 5th at the checkpoint.
Well crap. My whole second leg had been constructed under the thought that I had botched leg 1, and this was just to save a rally finish, without being competitive. Now that I knew I was competitive, and really stinking up leg 2, I had to try for something else ... but I was already most the way to Indianapolis. Pulling out the rally book, I started looking for bonus items that fell along the route I had already committed myself too this morning. There was only one possibility ... Point Pleasant, West Virginia. The interesting thing here, the bonus location was a monument to the Mothman legacy, which had been made into a movie not too long ago. I had enjoyed the movie, so the connection kind of stuck with me. Plus, it didn't look like it was adding too many miles onto my route. I made the route updates to the GPS, and set my new course.
The GPS was predicting I'd hit the site around 05:30 am, and had me getting to Statesville around noon. Knowing that the GPS tends to try to start with an optimistic estimation, I wanted to make as much time as possible before stopping. This was the leg where I would over-extend myself.
The last two hundred miles out into Point Pleasant where the hardest. While the RT lacks any aux lighting right now, I could occasionally see deer off on the side of the road. I was starting to get tired, but battling through that with stops every other rest stop for a walk around the park and another soda to keep things going.
As I made the cross over the Ohio river for the final 40 miles into Point Pleasant, I got my second wind and had the energy and focus to make it into town for the picture.
After getting the picture locked down, I made my way back to I-64 in order to meet up with I-77 for the descent into Statesville. As soon as I hit I-64, I knew I was in trouble. Fatigue was hitting, and it was hitting hard. As soon as I hit I-64, I was right back off and into the first Red Roof Inn I saw. After explaining to the nice lady at the counter why I had darkened her doorway at 07:30 in the morning asking for a room, she felt pity on me and gave me a quiet handicapped room around back of the parking lot. Checked in, I headed straight to the room, and it was lights out not 2 minutes after my head hit the pillow.
Fearing a mistake similar to the first leg, I had set the Screaming Meanie to give me exactly one hour sleep.
With one hour up, I was back on the bike, and at the front counter ready to check out. Again, the same friendly lady at the front desk looked in disbelief as I was ready to get back on the road. She then declared that she couldn't charge me for just using the room for one hour on the same day ... and to have a nice ride. She never did run my credit card. It was with that that I was back on the road and headed towards Statesville. I-64 quickly met up with I-77, and the tollroad portion of West Virginia soon transitioned into the beauty of Virginia. Not long after crossing into Virginia, there were temporary construction billboards on the side of the road warning or an accident further south. I reached the traffic backup just as an exit made itself available, so a quick detour calculated by Ms. Garmin had me running an alternate route to avoid the next 5 miles of I-77 through some incredibly nice backroad 2-lane in Virginia. It was almost a shame to have to get back on I-77 after that stretch of road, but I needed to make Statesville in a hurry.
Not much longer now, and I would pull into the Holiday Inn Statesville and get checked in by Leon just after 13:00 ... one hour before the deadline.
States Visited: MN, WI, IL, IN, KY, WV, OH, VA, NC
Today was the day that everything fell apart. From the blog perspective, Day four covers all of Thursday and the first half of Friday until getting back to the hotel.
The morning started off easy enough. With Donahue H-D not opening until 09:00, there wasn't a rush to get up and out the door in a hurry. The dealership was only 2.5 miles form the hotel, so my plan was to be there right when they opened.
Yesterday was an easy ride, getting 7 hours sleep at the hotel in Streetsboro OH before heading out, and only having one bonus stop to worry about. Looking at the route for today, some 1550 miles planned, I was starting to have second doubts. If the H-D shop doesn't open until 09:00, and I expected this wouldn't be my fastest stop, that would put me back on the route around 09:30 .... 09:30 Central that is, effectively 10:30 Eastern. I had to be back in NC by 14:00, so essentially I had another 28 hours to go ... less time that we had for the first leg, but with more miles.
Re-evaluating stops, I only had three planned for Thursday. The first being the H-D dealership of course, then a stop in Alton, IL, and finally a stop out on the Natchez Trace down south of Nashville, TN. I quickly decided to toss out the Alton stop, it was only worth 28 points, and not really worth the diversion off route to snag it, I didn't think. Finally I started taking a hard look at the TN stop. The GPS was indicating that I would be there around 02:00 ... right in my usual "getting sleepy" time. Making this stop would net me 1001 points, but was it really worth the miles to bag it? My biggest fear was that someone had found a way to snag a couple of the +15,000 point stops, in which case this leg wouldn't mean anything for me. After weighing back and forth, I decided to stick with the plan to just make sure I finished, knowing that I needed to work on multi-day pace. Pulling TN out of the route would bump my route down to more like 1100 miles, and had me slated to get into Statesville around 08:00. Crazy early, but it would meet the revised goals I had after what I believed was a botched leg 1.
Just after 09:00, I pulled into the parking lot for Donahue H-D. Brett was already in the office ... I had tried to give him a heads up the day before, but he was there regardless. Got in, snagged my picture with one of the two mascots they have at the dealerships ... a pair of pigs since Harley has the Hog association. Brett knew I was on the clock, so kept conversation short and I was back on the road by 09:15. Traffic was a little more dense for once, since it was still Thursday morning rush hour as I took the loop around Minneapolis/St. Paul and back in to Wisconsin. Just as the night before, the police presence was still pretty strong across Wisconsin.
After having driven through Chicago on a more direct route yesterday, I decided to try and steer clear of Chicago proper, while also avoiding toll roads as much as possible. I opted instead to take I-39 south down to Normal, IL, and then start heading back east. It was not long after I had connected with I-74 that I pulled off at a rest stop to re-evaluate things.
One of the things I was re-evaluating was my seat ... the Airhawk seat pad I had bought right before the Cal24 ... it wasn't doing me any good. I lasted longer this time, without the sheepskin pad over the Airhawk. As I sat on the food picnic table, I decided to give the bead-rider cover that Norm Grills had talked me into buying a try. I had brought it along with me to try on the way home from Statesville back to Dallas, expecting that it wouldn't work well enough ... was I in for a surprise!!
Second, on my periodic check of the cell phone, I saw that Jim Owen had also made the Donahue stop, but much later in the afternoon. Why was he so late??? I got that sinking feeling knew he had bagged some other big bonus, and now he had grabbed his second. About the same time, I got an IM from my friend Curt Gran, letting me know that after all that happened on leg 1, I had still managed to turn in enough points to claim 5th at the checkpoint.
Well crap. My whole second leg had been constructed under the thought that I had botched leg 1, and this was just to save a rally finish, without being competitive. Now that I knew I was competitive, and really stinking up leg 2, I had to try for something else ... but I was already most the way to Indianapolis. Pulling out the rally book, I started looking for bonus items that fell along the route I had already committed myself too this morning. There was only one possibility ... Point Pleasant, West Virginia. The interesting thing here, the bonus location was a monument to the Mothman legacy, which had been made into a movie not too long ago. I had enjoyed the movie, so the connection kind of stuck with me. Plus, it didn't look like it was adding too many miles onto my route. I made the route updates to the GPS, and set my new course.
The GPS was predicting I'd hit the site around 05:30 am, and had me getting to Statesville around noon. Knowing that the GPS tends to try to start with an optimistic estimation, I wanted to make as much time as possible before stopping. This was the leg where I would over-extend myself.
The last two hundred miles out into Point Pleasant where the hardest. While the RT lacks any aux lighting right now, I could occasionally see deer off on the side of the road. I was starting to get tired, but battling through that with stops every other rest stop for a walk around the park and another soda to keep things going.
As I made the cross over the Ohio river for the final 40 miles into Point Pleasant, I got my second wind and had the energy and focus to make it into town for the picture.
After getting the picture locked down, I made my way back to I-64 in order to meet up with I-77 for the descent into Statesville. As soon as I hit I-64, I knew I was in trouble. Fatigue was hitting, and it was hitting hard. As soon as I hit I-64, I was right back off and into the first Red Roof Inn I saw. After explaining to the nice lady at the counter why I had darkened her doorway at 07:30 in the morning asking for a room, she felt pity on me and gave me a quiet handicapped room around back of the parking lot. Checked in, I headed straight to the room, and it was lights out not 2 minutes after my head hit the pillow.
Fearing a mistake similar to the first leg, I had set the Screaming Meanie to give me exactly one hour sleep.
With one hour up, I was back on the bike, and at the front counter ready to check out. Again, the same friendly lady at the front desk looked in disbelief as I was ready to get back on the road. She then declared that she couldn't charge me for just using the room for one hour on the same day ... and to have a nice ride. She never did run my credit card. It was with that that I was back on the road and headed towards Statesville. I-64 quickly met up with I-77, and the tollroad portion of West Virginia soon transitioned into the beauty of Virginia. Not long after crossing into Virginia, there were temporary construction billboards on the side of the road warning or an accident further south. I reached the traffic backup just as an exit made itself available, so a quick detour calculated by Ms. Garmin had me running an alternate route to avoid the next 5 miles of I-77 through some incredibly nice backroad 2-lane in Virginia. It was almost a shame to have to get back on I-77 after that stretch of road, but I needed to make Statesville in a hurry.
Not much longer now, and I would pull into the Holiday Inn Statesville and get checked in by Leon just after 13:00 ... one hour before the deadline.
posted by Charlie at
11:42 PM
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