Chasing the Clock
Jeff Earls' 2002 Utah 1088 Report
For the 2002 running of the Utah 1088, RallyBastard(tm) Steve Chalmers offered
three route options. Unlike previous years, he withheld the route packages
from us until 1 hour before the start. The exception was a solitary
bonus, given to us the night before only to mess with our heads. That
bonus was worth 555 points and all you had to do was get the name, badge
number, signature, jurisdiction, and office phone number of any peace officer.
This had to be within the legal hours of the rally and no, getting
a ticket didn't count.
We'd also been warned that some bonus locations would be given out in latitude
and longitude coordinate form only.
At 6am on Saturday, June the 29th, we were given the route packs. We
could leave at our own pace starting at 7am. We would have 26 hours
to complete the rally. Note that to be an official finisher one had
to make two of the three mandatory checkpoints and ride at least the base
route distance of 1134 miles ... unless you opted for an alternate route.
In that case you had to completely fulfill the requirements of the
alternate route and make it back to Salt Lake City in time; no checkpoints
required. If you opted for an alternate route, you had to make your
intentions known to the rally staff before leaving.
I grabbed my route pack and went back to the room where I had my computer
and GPS set up. I quickly loaded the lat/lon bonuses into the GPS and
then pulled them back into Map'N'Go to see how they might fit into any plans.
The main route took riders west to Tooele and down past Utah Lake towards
checkpoint 1 in Nephi, After Nephi, the route scrambled around central
Utah towards checkpoint 2 in Hanksville at 4 to 6pm. From there, riders
would head down into Arizona (Kayenta/Page) and over to Cedar City to checkpoint
3 (2 to 4am). The final hours of the rally had riders aiming north
through the desert through Tooele and back to SLC. There were some
35 bonus locations on the main route. A few were marked as available
to main route riders only, such as the casino chip from Wendover, NV which
had to be turned in at the first checkpoint only a few hours after the start.
Other bonuses made you make interesting choices. The first on the list
was a picture from inside the Utah state capitol building. This was
available from 8am to 5pm on Saturday only. Delay your start an hour
for 1800+ points? hmmm. Another offered 2988 points for a picture
of the pony express station at Simpson Springs (25+ miles down a gravel and
rock road, daylight only). Another big one involved a lot of work and
three stops in Zion NP. How about 2111 points for a gas receipt from
Laramie, WY?
I scanned the main route and then onto the alternates. Option
2 was worth ~7500 points and required 4 stops (one near Cheyenne, one in
Colorado Springs, a gas receipt from Santa Fe, and a gas receipt from Durango,
CO dated 6/29/02). No checkpoints required. Option 3 was worth
~9100 points and had only three stops (the Nez Perce reservation near Lewiston
before 5:30pm on 6/29/02, Lolo, Montana, and Thermopolis, Wyoming). Steve
told us that Option 2 was 1650 miles and Option 3 was 1709 miles.
Option 3 wasn't even remotely close to any main route bonuses so I discarded
it. I plugged route 2 into the computer and came up with 1544 miles.
I wasn't sure how to correlate that with Steve's 1650 but I trust Map'n'Go
for lower-48 state route calculations involving only interstates and US highways.
1544 miles would be a piece of cake, especially if I ran the route
in reverse order from what was printed on the sheet. Running it reverse
was the only way as far as I was concerned because of the time restriction
on Durango. That would also let me get onto the open interstate system
at night and rip the miles with less worry about deer, antelope, and coyotes.
Given that was the case, I looked to where I could add points. The
2111 in Laramie would be a given. I added in the pony express station
and a few other bonuses south of Tooele and Provo that would bump the mileage
up over 1700. I figured a total around 15,000 points if I could also
get the signature and such from a police officer along my route. I
decided to go for it and gamble that main route riders wouldn't be able to
collect enough points to match.
I packed up and headed to the bike about 10 minutes before 7 and told Steve
I was taking option 2. When the clock rang 7am, I fired up the bike
and headed out.
The big variable in front of me was the gravel road. If it was slow,
I'd really have to push later in the day to make up lost time. If it
was fast, I'd have the option to maybe score an unplanned bonus or two. None
the less I knew I was taking a chance. I didn't have a precise fix
on the number of miles I'd have to crank out to pull off my plan. I
knew it to be in excess of 1700 miles but by how much? If you do the
math, you'll find it that makes for a bold overall average speed target given
that a lot of my route would be on two-lane roads. To add the to the
fogginess, I didn't calculate exactly how many miles it was from Santa Fe
around through Cheyenne and back to SLC. I had a scientific wild-ass
guess (SWAG) of around 900 miles but that was it. My plan called for
me to ride my ass off while the sun was shining and hope to be up I-25 somewhere
north of Sante Fe before night fell. Of course I knew that I have to
continue riding my ass off through the dark hours. None the less I
felt good about it I also felt that I would have a good chance at the
win if I pulled it off. As you might imagine, I spent a lot of time
watching the average speed indicator on my GPS receiver.
Click here to see the GPS track log of my ride.
I was the first out of the gate and turned west on to I-80. A few miles
down the road I turned south on UT-36 and rode through Tooele. Then
it was a left turn on UT-73 and a right turn on a small side road towards
the first lat/lon bonus. It was right where it was supposed to be.
Imagine that. ;-)
When I rejoined UT-36 I grabbed another bonus at the intersection and then
made a slight blunder. I failed to note the trip odo reading on my
bike as the turn off for the gravel road to Simpson Springs was said to be
0.6 miles south of the present bonus. It was also said to be marked
as the old pony express trail. I passed a road that could have been
it but not seeing a sign, I continued on. Shortly thereafter I saw
the sign and turned onto the next gravel road. This was a mistake but
it took 10-15 minutes of bumbling around in some farmer's back-40 to realize
it. I rode through a lot of mud puddles searching for the right road.
I finally gave up and backtracked to the other road, hoping it was
it. A quarter mile down the road I saw a sign noting that it was the
pony express trail. I saw another rider as well and followed him at
speeds that I couldn't have planned or hoped to maintain on this portion
of my ride. It was a good gravel road. At the bonus
location I found that the rider was Dick Fish. We compared notes and
found we had different plans. We wished each other well and I bombed
back out to the highway.
On reaching the highway I was disturbed at how much my average speed had
been hurt by the directional miscue. I reassured myself that I had
many hours left to get it back in shape and plugged through Santaquin and
Nephi. I didn't need to stop at the checkpoint although I was there
at 10:30. I opted not to partake in the minor bonus of having a checkpoint
worker count as I did pushups (5 points each, max 125 points).
From Nephi I grabbed UT-28 south towards Salina and I-70. I knew that
I-70 would be my first good chance at digging out of the average speed hole
I was in.
As I approached Gunnison, my radar detector was going berserk on K band.
I knew there had to be a stationary speed trap in or near town. As
I got closer I decided to try for the peace officer bonus if it wasn't just
a "your speed is" trailer. In the center of town I spied the white
unmarked car and whipped a quick U-turn to park behind him. I took
off my helmet and approached the car. As he rolled his window down
I made my request. It took a little talking but in the end he was happy
to sign my "scavenger hunt" form. He thought the whole thing kinda
cool and wished me luck.
I was eastbound on I-70 shortly thereafter. By the time I got to Moab,
I'd pulled the overall average up to the point where I was in the hunt. I
wasn't out of the woods yet but I wasn't sunk. I was still counting
on the night's worth of interstate to absorb the day's follies.
The mercury ascended quickly as I dropped into Moab. It stayed in the
triple digits into and through Monticello. As the terrain ascended
into the San Juan Mountains, the temperatures finally dropped a few degrees.
I rolled into Durango at around 3:40pm and it was confortably in the
low 90's.
It was a beautiful afternoon in southwestern Colorado. Traffic was
light and free-flowing, the scenery was spectacular, and the animals stayed
hidden in the forests.
After three hours of struggle with traffic and road construction, I pulled
into Sante Fe at 7pm; almost exactly 12 hours into the rally. I was
feeling pretty good at this point. Good enough to take the extra time
to down a nutrition bar and refill my water jug. I'd put 800+ miles
behind me on the slow "half" of my plan. I had 14 hours to finish with
nothing but fast interstate in front of me. My overall average was
where I left it Moab, which was good.
From here there isn't much to say. Towns and cities rolled by. I
crossed Raton Pass back into Colorado at 9:30pm. Two hours later I
was taking a photo of the statue in front of the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame in
Colorado Springs. Denver came and went shortly after midnight. There
was no traffic to speak of as I sailed through the city. I made the
turn at Cheyenne and stopped at the Lincoln Memorial near the top of the
Laramie Mountains to the west. This was the final requirement of the
route. I had to record, using my GPS, the latitude and longitude of
the memorial itself and take a polaroid of a entirely separate granite memorial
at the same location. Reading comprehension is a key on these events.
By now I had a much clearer picture of the miles remaining to the finish
west of Salt Lake City. I set a loose target of reaching the Wyoming/Utah
border at 7am. I stopped in Laramie for gas and the bonus receipt.
Somewhere west of Rawlins I was attacked by an air wing of large moths.
The sky started to lighten as I crossed the Continental Divide Basin.
The sun was peeking over the horizon as I rolled through Rock Springs.
After one more gas stop, I reached the border only minutes before
7am.
Knowing now that I would easily make the finish, I set out to find one last
"chicken feed" bonus to the west of the start/finish hotel. I rode
down Echo Canyon and then through the last pass in the Wasatch and into a
sleepy sunday morning Salt Lake City. I-80 was closed that morning
through town but that was ok. Detour signs dumped me out onto UT-201,
which was where I wanted to be anyway. Twelve miles later I was collecting
a final 119 points by learning who adopted that particular stretch of highway.
Then I turned back east to the hotel and the finish.
I rolled into the parking lot at 8:15am, having covered 1741 miles. I
knew I'd put in a good ride had felt it could be enough to win. The
big question remaining was the number of points a main route rider could
collect. I just didn't know and was keeping my fingers crossed.
On talking with riders in the parking lot I found that several got caught
on my route by running it the direction stated on the listing. They
didn't make it to Durango by midnight and lost all those points. They
also encountered a huge number of deer on the roads between Santa Fe and
Monticello.
At the awards banquet, my name was called first with 15077 points and
10th place. Rats. I gambled twice and came up 50-50. The
first gamble was that I could ride my plan in the time alloted. I did
that. The second was that it would pay enough to get me the win. That
one didn't pan out. Gary Eagan repeated as the winner with over 20000
points. I don't regret my ride choice however. I knew I was pushing
my envelope with the ride I planned and was quite happy to have pulled it
off.
Steve ... bravo on another spectacular rally. I can't wait to try again.
Jeff Earls
Portland, OR
jearls@rdrop.com