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September 1, 2002: Blessing and Curse Welcome to the last leg of the rally. We're done with checkpoints, and in 53 hours the rally will end back at the Live Oak Resort. This is, of course, both good and bad. With the end in sight, riders will have to force themselves to resist the natural human inclination to avoid pain and discomfort, and instead focus on the task at hand. A group of riders--some of them current front runners--will get sick of running long miles and bonus hunting. This group will decide to head straight back to the barn, even to the point of riding right past easily obtainable bonuses. A second, much smaller group of riders will put their heads down, ignore the pain and push hard on this final leg. Members of this second group will see their finishing positions advance, sometimes by five or more places. Members of the first group will have a long time to wonder about what might have been. There are two major bonuses on this leg. The first is simple to explain: in exchange for 4140 points, riders must go to Mazatlan, Mexico and obtain a gas receipt and a photograph of the Cerro del Creston lighthouse. The second bonus pays 4460 points and involves traveling to Cassoday, Kansas to take a photo of TeamStrange staffer and noted animal psychiatrist Bob Waitz between 1000 and 1400 Sunday. The hard part of this bonus is that the rider must locate Bob amongst the hundreds of other motorcyclists who gather at the Cassoday Cafe for their monthly motorcycle breakfast. The simple part is that Bob will be easy to spot. He'll be the only one there wearing a kilt and wielding a machete. As you might expect, choosing between the two will involve certain tradeoffs. The Mazatlan bonus is interstate nearly all the way, including about 700 miles of Mexican tollway between Douglas, Arizona and the bonus itself. Mexican travel expert and IBA high miler Dave McQueeney describes this road as "smooth pavement, no speed limits and no police." These facts explain why Mazatlan potentially pays less points than Cassoday, which requires riders to travel farther and hit a specific four hour window to earn the bonus. Riders who run to Mazatlan and secure selected other bonuses (some of which were described by my thieving colleague Dirk Diggler here) might expect to earn somewhere in the neighborhood of 11,000 points. Riders who include the Cassoday bonus on their scoresheet might see up to 12,000 points. Of course, to earn these points things have to go your way. Grady Dunham learned this lesson early in the leg, while still in the Cummings parking lot. You'll recall that at the end of Leg Three, Grady was in first place, though only 67 points ahead of second place rider Paul Pelland. Standing in the parking lot in front of his battle scarred R1, Dunham was cool. He held in his hands the ultimate ace in the hole: a cobalt blue latte mug from Bob's Java Hut in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We told you would see this material again. No matter how well Pelland could do on Leg Four, Dunham could always do 333 points better. Pelland never got the mug on Leg Two. These comforting thoughts spinning around Grady's head must have interfered with his hand/eye coordination. How else to explain the means by which Dunham fumbled his precious mug and watched it shatter on the asphalt at his feet? The point spread between first and second place had just narrowed considerably. Some riders decided to avoid the Mexico/Kansas dilemma and pay a visit to Clay Henry, the famed beer drinking goat of Lajitas, Texas. "I'm going to go see a goat about a beer," advised Jim Winterer. Mike Etlicher agreed. "With the rally I've been having, it will be one for him and one for me." Other riders were less interested in Lajitas. "That damn goat is on every rally I've ever run," groused one participant. "I'm never going to see him, just on principle." Before the staff minivan could leave California, we had to pay our respects at the grave of Carl Wilson, located at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park & Mortuary in Los Angeles. Riders were offered a similar opportunity, with the additional reward of bonus points earned for the visit. This famous cemetery is also the final resting place of such luminaries as Billy Wilder, Walter Matthau, Will and Ariel Durant, Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon (note the clever inscription on his tombstone), Vincent Price and Mel Torme. Around 2000 Saturday evening we found ourselves at the home of Brad and Laurie Dassonville in Glendale, Arizona. Brad and Laurie had kindly invited our riders to stop by, have some snacks and enjoy a dive in the pool. Riders who stayed at least 30 minutes earned substantial bonus points to boot. As we walked through the house, we overhead a group of riders talking themselves out of bonus after bonus. "Mazatlan is impossible at this point in the rally," one rider moaned. "Besides, its hot." I left the room and walked out to the bikes parked along the curb. Bike after bike sported the famous "World's Toughest Riders" license plate frame. Some bikes even displayed Bun Burner Gold plate frames. What were these riders talking about? Didn't they read our previous ButtLite reports? Didn't they know the history of this event? Lets review. On the first ButtLite, Eddie and I were standing in front of El Famous in Summit, Illinois, where a large group of riders had gathered to eat giant burritos, meet Eddie Otto and earn bonus points. We had hung a big bonus out in Fargo, North Dakota, and in order to earn the bonus a rider would have to leave Summit, drive past the finish line in Saint Paul to Fargo, then drive back to the finish to end the rally. The general consensus at Summit was that this feat was impossible. They were right. It was impossible--for them. Eric Jewell and Tom Austin felt otherwise. They just got on his bikes and banged out the miles--Eric right into first place. (Get the full story here.) As Danny Liska once said, "Its only far if you don't go." Even if we could forgive these riders' ignorance of ButtLite lore, we can 't understand their unwillingness to do the math. At the time the above conversation occurred in the Dassonville living room, there were approximately 40 hours and 2000 miles to cover the distance from Glendale to the finish line via Mazatlan. By their license plate frames, we know these riders can cover 1500 miles in 24 hours. If this is so, why couldn't these same riders cover 2000 miles in 40 hours? A Bun Burner Gold requires the rider to maintain an average of 62.5 miles per hour over 24 hours. If these riders left immediately for Mazatlan, they would only need to maintain a 50 mph average over roads that had speed limits of no less than 70 mph. Why didn't they see these simple facts? The answer, I'm afraid, was distressingly simple. They just did not want to see these simple facts. The last leg of any multi day endurance rally is always the hardest. Riders are tired, their physical and mental reserves drained. As Saturday turned to Sunday, the hotline began to ring with depressing regularity. Rider after rider called, each on the verge of throwing in the towel. Each had his reasons, but in the end every call sounded like someone talking themselves out of going to the finish line. All we could do was offer our encouragement, remind the riders how good it would feel to finish the rally, and how the alternative would certainly gnaw at them if they gave up without trying. This final leg of ButtLite III offers a blessing or a curse. Every rider on the rally is faced with the same circumstances. All are tired. All are ready for the pain to be over. It is on this final leg that each rider will find out whether Leg 4 will end with the blessing of a successful finish, or the curse of self doubt that accompanies a DNF. As of this writing, only the remaining riders know how this drama will play out. Tomorrow, so will the rest of us. |
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