Well, not so much a "void" in riding as it is, but rather an event known as "The Void". Apply named because the event was created to fill the void in the northeast that had been occurring between the conclusion of the summer rally schedule and the lack of anything until spring, The Void helps ease the pain by providing an October rally as riding conditions start to wind down to winter.
Being set in October, weather is always a factor ... Texas is still having 90+ degree days, but over night temps are starting to dip and the chance of rain increases much more so than what we contended with in the summer months.
There's not been alot of riding since the BITE completed back in July, but the results of that rally have contributed to changes on the bike going into this event. It looks like the bike will finish up it's first year in my possession with roughly 24K miles on the odometer ... my biggest year to date.
The Void will be my 3rd rally for 2007. It would have been my 4th if I had not of dropped out of the Cal24 back in June. The biggest change going into this even will be a change in my hydration system, with larger water jug replacing my previous Camelbak bladder. This will let me carry more water, keep that water colder, and because the water is colder ... hopefully encourage me to do a better job of staying hydrated. The water change was also needed in advance of another change coming for next year ... specifically the addition of an auxiliary fuel tank which is mounted to the passenger seat, which will displace the luggage bag I had been strapping to the rear seat and holding my Camelbak bladder. To hold the new water jug, I'm using a set of Aerostich tank panniers hung over the seat and secured to the passenger footpegs. The water jug is in the right hand bag, while the left hand bag holds more of my maintenance items that were previously stored in my left hand saddle bag. This should free up my left hand saddlebag for storing luggage that was previously put in the tail bag across the rear seat. The Void will be the first test of this new configuration, even though the fuel tank won't be installed until November.
The final area to undergo change for this event is my cell phone setup. My previous setup, with an old Nokia cell phone mounted to my dash shelf and hard wired into the Autocom intercom, didn't stand up too well to rain encountered early in the BITE. I've been having some problems with the Nokia phone since I unlocked it from it's original AT&T Wireless configuration to allow it to work with a newer Cingular SIM card ... interesting because Cingular is now AT&T Wireless yet again. So for this event, I'll be using a newer phone and wanted a better way to secure it so that I don't have to worry about the elements. I'm going to use the bluetooth interface on my BMW Navigator III GPS unit, so that I can keep the cell phone secured in either my tankbag or in one of my Aerostich pockets. Connecting audio from the GPS into the Autocom is still under development ... ideally I'll use the Autocom bluetooth interface adapter, but there seems to be some confusion as to whether that will work with my Autocom unit or not. If not, I have a temporary Motorola bluetooth unit I can use to hard wire into the Autocom, and have it provide the bluetooth connection to the GPS.
With the cell phone sorted out, I'm also making a change here to the blog that I'll try out with The Void. Instead of just relying on nightly posts to the blog to let everyone know what's going on, I'm going with a setup that I saw Paul Peloquin use in the 2007 Iron Butt Rally, and using Hipcast to incorporate audio updates to my blog. This way, I can call in from the road and leave audio updates, which are then posted automatically to my blog. We'll see how well this works, but is seemed to work pretty well for Paul during the IBR. If nothing else, it could speed up my nightly reports when I don't have the time/desire to fire up the laptop for an update, and I can more easily just call in an update letting people know I've stopped for sleep.
The bonus list for The Void should be sent out early next week, so more updates coming soon!
