Introduction
…remember
when we were talking to that guy at the Catsup Bottle…
-Carrie Hanson
Last year was
my first time riding in the Team
Strange Minnesota 1000, and the first time I'd done a 24 hour
ride period. Now I've done several, and while still pretty difficult,
you get better at it. The Minnesota 1000 is a bit of a misnomer, as
except for last year, it's never run entirely in Minnesota, and you
don't actually have to go 1000 miles to finish (more on that later).
The rallymasters can, and do, give you all kinds of crazy places you
can go - it's up to you to plan efficiently. This year we (Ron
and Carrie Hanson and myself) wanted to try and win the rally,
or at least be near the top. Last year, without really trying that
hard, we did fairly well, and Ron even placed fifth in touring class
- not bad!
After getting
our mandatory bonuses (visiting the rally sponsors) the weekend before,
we headed to the Bayricher Hof in Montrose, MN on Friday afternoon
fot the Liar's Banquet. The Hof was the location for the banquet,
the start, and the finish this year, which worked out very well. I'd
taken the day off in order to sleep in until 11, which ended up being
a pretty good idea considering the lack of sleep in the coming days.
The food was excellent, and as usual, it's fun to see all the bikes
and compare them. Unfortunately, for some reason I ended up getting
really ill (nerves maybe?) that night, and spending a large portion
of my time in the porta-pottie - not cool, and I hoped that would
be resolved by the next day. Unlike last year, we actually received
some bonuses on Friday, so we went home to plan. We were up until
11 or so with Ron entering them into the laptop, and me marking them
on the paper map while Carrie read them off. Our initial route based
on those was around 30,000 points - pretty good since last year's
winner was around 25,000. I ended up with very little sleep that night.
I couldn't get Ron's Mapsource file to load into my GPS, and Garmin's
website was giving me problems. Then, when I was just about asleep,
I heard a crash downstairs, and thought someone was trying to break
in. Lisa and the dog were camping, and the cat was sleeping next to
me, so I knew it wasn't one of the animals, so I was freaked out,
and ended up with about four hours sleep. Oh well, I never sleep well
before distance rides anyway…
And they're
off!
We went back out
to Montrose Saturday morning, to find, as expected, there were more
bonuses. This of course threw our first route out the window. We looked
at a few possibilities, and found that going down through Iowa and
Illinois to St. Louis and Jefferson City, MO would gain us the most
points. It was about 1400 miles though, so we knew it would be pushing
it, but that route was over 40,000 points, which would have to be
close to the top. It also meant no sleep bonus, so physically it would
be tough as well. We rode a long way before hitting our first bonus,
which was a giant treehouse near Marshalltown, IA. The lady there
seemed surprised, and not entirely happy, to see the three of us,
dressed like spacemen, ride up to the campground. We must have been
the first to show up there. We explained that we just needed to read
her sign, and leave. The treehouse is a Lincoln Highway Interpretive
Site, in case you wanted to know. It was on to our second bonus which
was a bank in Grinnell, IA. I think it had something to do with architect
Louis Sullivan. All I know is that it had lions with wings on it.
We followed that with a visit to the house featured in the painting
"American Gothic" in Eldon, IA. I figured there'd be more to it, but
it was just a house. We did the standard farmer with a pitchfork pose
for our photo bonuses, and headed for Hannibal, MO, for another bonus,
which was just to get a gas receipt. On the way we drove through Ottumwa,
where we were nearly run over by about three different cars - Radar
O'Reilly would be ashamed! Why does Iowa, a smaller state than MN
and with lower taxes, have so many good roads? Lots of four-lane and
good pavement. I can't say the same for Missouri though - road construction
there consists of pouring greasy oil on the road and slapping up a
sign telling about it. You know it's not good when you see mist coming
from the back tires of the bike in front of you, and it hasn't rained
in days!
It was in Hannibal
we met up with Brett Donahue and his Barney Glide and Allen Wilson.
They were going the same way as we were, at least for a while, so
we rode with them to Pittsfield, IL (to buy BBQ potato chips), and
then down the Illinois River to Alton, IL. The ride down the river
was one of the prettiest and most fun rides I'd ever been on - great
roads and great scenery along the river flats. I'd never seen houses
on stilts before but I'd imagine you'd need that there. Brett had
a radar detector, so we rode behind him, and it was exciting to say
the least. He's a hell of a good rider, being a former racer, and
it put our skills to the test riding with him. We left them at the
Reverend Lovejoy Memorial in Alton, IL (I have to wonder if the Simpsons
character is named for this guy). We were concerned about this one,
as it appeared to be a time limited bonus, as the park closes 1/2
hour after sunset. What we didn't realize until we were on our way,
was that the sun sets about a half hour EARLIER when you go that far
south - uh oh - that could be a problem. Turns out we made it with
some time to spare (and later found out we wouldn't be time barred
even if we'd been there later - way to mess with our minds!) Brett
and Allen left us there and went deeper into Illinois, while we headed
toward St. Louis.
One of my jobs
seems to be to find tall objects on rallies. First the treehouse,
then the Lovejoy monument, and now we were on our way (after a gas
stop in Pontoon Beach, IL) to the World's Largest Catsup Bottle in
Collinsville, IL, a suburb of St. Louis. I was a little nervous about
this (I'm also the worrier of the group) because I'd been on the Illinois
side of St. Louis before, in East St. Louis, where I once made a wrong
turn and ended up in what appeared to be a war zone. I didn't want
to repeat that, especially not late at night on a bike. My fears were
unfounded - Collinsville was a nice town, but we had to drive a long
way off the freeway to find the bottle - which I barely spotted through
some trees. Apparently had we come from the other way, it was easy
to see. This was the biggest bonus on the rally - over 8000 points,
and sure enough, there were three other riders there when we were,
including John Coons, who helped us out by turning on his headlights
to light the sign for our photo bonus - many thanks to John!
Uh oh - not
another problem on a rally!
To get to our
next stop, the Elvis museum in Wright City, MO, we had to go right
through downtown St. Louis. It was really cool to see the Gateway
Arch lit up at night as you cross the river, though traffic was pretty
bad even at that time of night. As we pulled off for the bonus in
Wright City, I noticed my speedometer start to bounce. That hadn't
happened before, and I was concerned. When we stopped, I fiddled with
the cable - everything seemed tight, and the cable wasn't broken -
maybe it'd be okay. No such luck - when we got back on the road, it
bounced a couple more times, and then I had no speedometer at all,
and no odometers - completely dead. You have to have a working odometer
to collect points. You probably could have heard my heart sink back
in Minneapolis - we were in contention to win, and now this. I knew
that the best case scenario was that I'd lose my fuel log and our
final bonus in Jefferson City - a 7500 point bonus, and at worst I'd
get no bonus points and DNF. We thought that I could collect my points
up to the failure, but I wasn't sure, and the rules weren't completely
clear (is anything really clear on a distance ride at 11:45 at night?).
I debated heading
straight back to MN, knowing I couldn't collect any more points, or
staying with Ron and Carrie. I chose to stick with them rather than
ride alone through the middle of Missouri and Iowa on two-lanes in
the middle of the night, so we headed down to Jefferson City. I don't
think we realized how far off the interstate it was - about 25 miles,
meaning about an hour round trip with the bonus. The bonus was just
a gas receipt (which I couldn't claim) and we had to drive all the
way through town to find a gas station. This is the freaking capital
of the state and there's no gas on the north side of town? I was afraid
this would be one of those "sucker bonuses" and they had some crazy
law banning gas stations in city limits. That wasn't the case, and
we found a couple of stations a few miles in. Apparently, hanging
out at the gas station at 12:30 am is the hip thing to do in Jefferson
City. At the one across the street from us, there must have been 40
people having a party in the parking lot of some convenience store.
Loud music blaring, cars coming and going, people hanging around on
the curb drinking, yelling to us "I WANT A RIDE" - it was quite the
scene. I'll have to plan my next get together at the Mobil station
too - stale hot dogs and 3.2 beer for all!
That was our last
bonus before heading straight home through the deer-infested hinterlands
of Missouri and Iowa. There weren't many towns or cars on that stretch,
and it was really dark as there was no moon. We had to keep on the
lookout for deer, raccoons, cats and drunks on the road, and we probably
saw a few of each. We stopped before we needed to in Kirksville, MO
for gas, as we didn't know for sure where we'd find another open station
and headed for Des Moines. Near Des Moines, Carrie started to get
really tired, so we pulled off at a gas station. Unfortunately, the
station wasn't open, so we couldn't get gas there. Carrie slept for
15 minutes while Ron and I wandered around the parking lot (if only
that Sonic next door would have been open - mmmm Sonic!).
We stopped again
for gas in Williams, IA, and realized we were really tight on time
- we had between 10 and 30 minutes for a window to avoid being time
barred - that's too close. Any delays and we'd be done, not to mention
that it would be pushing the fuel limits on Ron's wing and my Concours.
Traffic was light though in the Twin Cities on Sunday morning, and
we made it back with about 20 minutes to spare - coasting in on fumes,
as I'd hit my reserve fuel switch about 10 miles out. We did the usual
"wander around in a post-rally daze" talking to others about their
rides, before putting together our paperwork and scoring info.
The finish!
I still didn't
know if I'd get any points at all, so I kind of rushed through my
pre-scoring before going up to the table. I sat down, and we had to
get the judge's ruling as to whether I could collect points. Turns
out I could, but I couldn't claim Jefferson City or my fuel log. Whoo
hoo! I could still be in contention for an award! I sat and ate with
Bonzai and Border to Border roommate Paul Sundet. It was his first
MN1k, so he was in rookie class. He'd run the rally alone as he thought
it'd be an unfair advantage to riding with us. Yeah right - he did
more miles than we did - and accumulated over 30,000 points, all on
his own, not to mention he was the very last person to leave the parking
lot at the start of the rally. That's a hell of a ride!
All's well
that ends well - or "How we all got wood!"
Finally awards
time rolled around. Two-up class was won by the Metallic Waste team,
running 3-up on a sidecar rig. They actually made it 1005 miles, but
I'm not sure how. Deb Nimz won the standard class on her Harley with
ape-hanger bars - wow! As I said before, Paul destroyed everyone to
win the Rookie Class and Touring class was next, and Ron won that
by a landslide, as he and Carrie had over 40,000 points each.
Unfortunately,
with that award it meant they didn't win the overall title, but first
in class is still impressive. Sport-touring class was next, and other
than expert, is usually the most competitive. It's also the class
Carrie and I are in. After the first score was read, I knew I'd placed
(I assumed Carrie had placed of course) I just didn't know where.
They got to third place and read Critter's name, and since I beat
him (he lost 5000 points at the table - otherwise he'd have beaten
me), I knew Carrie and I were 1 and 2.
I was as happy
for Ron and Carrie as I was for my own award - it's pretty cool to
do that well in our second year. There were a lot of dropping jaws
in the tent when first they announced that I'd racked up 34,000 points
with an odometer failure and (technically) only 600+ miles, but when
they announced Carrie's score it was even better, as she'd beaten
some of the best riders in the country with her score - very cool.
(except now she's a target - nobody wants to lose to a girl!!!) Turns
out "the guy at the catsup bottle," John Coons, won the overall big
prize, barely beating Ron and Carrie's score. Good job (and even better
job barely squeaking in under the wire). Brett and Allen didn't make
it back in time, and neither did Bob 498, who went to the Mackinac
Bridge. They showed up for the end-of-rally dinner and awards though,
so it was good to see them back safely.
In all it was
our most successful rally outing by far - let's see how we fare next
time out!
Buffalo run anyone?
