Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Bonus Scouting in Nevada for the Wild Wild West Rally.

The Wild Wild West rally was a 32 hour endurance motorcycle rally organized by my friends Brian "Kirill" R. and Dale "Warchild" Wilson.


The rally was almost an year in the making. I remember sitting with Brian R. and Dale as we were brainstorming ways to make the rally a truly unique format, something which had not been done before in the endurance rally world. Suddenly I blurted out - "Why not make them pretend they are cowboys in the wild west and make them live out a lifetime in the west in 32 hours or less". I had no idea at the time of speaking what the evil rally genius in Brian's mind was going to do with this idea and the puzzle he would create to torment the riders with..

The rally format would essentially make the rally participants (riders), virtually endure a life in the Wild West. They would earn money by visiting certain bonus locations (such as mines, casinos and historic bank and train robbery sites). They would spend money by visiting other bonus locations (such as whorehouses, historic battle grounds etc). At the end of the rally - their virtual life in the Wild West would come to an end and the tax man would tally up their earnings and their expenditure - the idea being to crown the rider who earnt the most and also ended his virtual Wild West life spending the last penny he ever earnt - or as close to that ideal as possible..


Not all bonus locations are cataloged in this ride report. There were over 86 bonus locations for this rally, so I picked and chose the ones that I found interesting. It is left as an exercise to the reader to determine which bonus locations fell into which category.. :)


DAY 1:

We pulled the bikes out for an "early" start. What is it light out already? Blame it on the alarm clock!
We decided to get riding first and have breakfast somewhere along the way (we were already thinking about "where").. :)



Monday, June 14, 2010

The Beauty of Hwy 4 in the Sierra Mountains.



Mike and Old Michael were doing a Hwy 4 ride on Saturday, they invited me to the ride but I had a date Friday night and didn't come home till very late at night.
I checked my messages in the morning and they had just left the Eldorado Hills meetup location at 8:50AM - I figured I would try and intercept them at lunch in Markleeville.


I left at 10AM after a quick pre-ride check and fueling up. I took Hwy 50 to Meyers and then got on Hwy 89 over Luther Pass towards Hwy 88.