The Plotting Thickens
The Sunday banquet arrived soon enough. I sat by myself for the dinner, again not really wanting to hear the conversation of other riders. As soon as the route sheets were handed out, I got exactly what I expected. Thirty eight pages with over 100 bonus locations. Prior to the Rally, I had practiced routing using the bonus lists from every prior Rally. Having done that, I saw that this was the most complex leg of any Rally, easily surpassing the final legs in 2005 and 1999. The 1999 final leg had taken me nearly 90 minutes to plan, the longest of any that I had practiced.
As Lisa Landry and Mike Kneebone talked at the podium, I went to work. I quickly went through the bonuses counting points. As I did this, I made sure to listen for any new information coming from the podium. As the meeting was wrapping up, I had already divided the bonuses into small, medium and large quantities based upon point value. I retired to my room to start doing some serious number crunching.
People drifted in and out of the room. After a while, I got tired of answering the door and just propped the door open. Roger had brought a map of North America and was plotting bonuses on the map. Though this can be useful for seeing the big picture of what is where, it is not exceptionally conducive to coming up with a winning route. People talked, bonuses were discussed. I tried to block out as much as possible as I methodically entered every bonus into my laptop. Dean came to the room and asked me some questions about what I was doing. I explained the process, but told him I was no where near a route yet. I was not going to repeat 2005. He stated he would come back in a couple of hours to see where I was.
Mike Kneebone, Bob Higdon and other Rally officials stopped by to observe. I continued plotting. It was slow slogging, but I knew it would be worthwhile. After several hours of plotting, I finally had all the bonuses loaded into the computer. I started crunching even more numbers. I was looking for a route of 4800-5200 miles that would yield the most points.
There were two obvious choices. Ride to the northeast to large bonuses in New Brunswick or ride to the southeast to large bonuses in Louisiana and Florida. Many of the bonuses worked around daylight timing. The large bonuses in New Brunswick had to be obtained at low tide as they required a short walk across the ocean floor. It became very apparent there were not enough points on the southeast route to be competitive. Once again, it appeared that I would be riding to New Brunswick. It was déjà vu all over again.
Vicki Johnston stopped by. She concurred and had come to the same conclusion that northeast was the way to go. That was where the real work began. It seemed to me that the Rally planners were obviously pushing the riders in an easterly direction along I-70, then up to Maine and into Canada. Large bonuses dotted the route like breadcrumbs. Paul and Roger favored a more technical route picking up many of the smaller bonuses along the way. I was leaning toward a more sledge hammer route making a hard push for the large bonus in Maine at Reynolds Motorsports, arriving there at 9:00 AM on Tuesday morning, as soon as it opened.
From there I would head up to Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and over to New Brunswick. After that, things would get very tight going for a large bonus on the upper peninsula of Michigan and then dropping down into Chicago by Thursday night to snag 3 large bonuses there. The route was very tight but I thought doable. The key would be to hit the bonuses in Maine and New Brunswick early.
Unlike 2005, I could never get comfortable with this route. Timing was so crucial. The window in New Brunswick was only two hours. If I missed it, I might as well go home. The Rally would be over for me.
Dean came back. I gave him my route but was still not happy. I loaded the bonuses in the GPS and tried to sleep. The more I tried to sleep, the less it would come. I kept trying to make the windows in the route larger and easier to hit with no success. Finally around 3:00 AM, I came up with a different idea. Catching the ferry from Maine to Nova Scotia would save a ton of time. I would still need to be in Maine early Tuesday morning, but the route seemed very reasonable now. Finally by 4:30 AM I was pretty comfortable with the route and fell asleep. I awoke about two hours later to start preparing.
I called Nancy to have her check the ferry schedule as I did not have internet access. I was hoping it ran every hour or so, but would settle for twice a day. After talking with Nancy, I started packing the bike, getting ready to head out. After a quick breakfast, Nancy called back with the bad news. The ferry would not work. It departed late in the afternoon on Tuesday. I was crushed. I thought I had come up with a very good option and now I had to revert to original overland route. [Through miscommunication or some other mistake, the ferry schedule Nancy gave me was wrong. Alex Schmitt would successfully take the ferry on this exact route and be well positioned in 4th place after the first leg.]
Once again, I was not happy with my route. Though I thought it was a good one that would leave me in striking distance, I did not think it was a winning route. I spoke with Paul and Roger who again brought up the more technical route with a gazillion stops on the way to Maine. I still did not like that route. Too many stops would take too much time and I could miss the Maine window. If I missed Maine, I missed New Brunswick. If I missed New Brunswick, I missed Chicago…and yada yada yada. I stayed with the original plan.
Continue to Chapter 3
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