Cal24 2009 - BARF Style Reloaded!

[Whodat]

1 Meese Ken K1200GT
2 Ciurczak Alex R1200
3 Beaton Don R1100S
4 Mackey Andy Tiger

Actually Don Beaton was riding an 1150RT. It was a loaner as his 1100S out of commission at a service dept. somewhere.

 

[Mortifer]

Yep I tired to attempt the 'Thread' it was 'fun' Here are some pics of the men:

damn D, congrats for accomplishing such a LONG ride on the GSXR!!!!
Looks like everyone else had comfy touring/cruising bikes.

 

[Dmitriy]

This is pretty much exactly the route I ran:
http://tinyurl.com/Cal24PartA

http://tinyurl.com/Cal24PartB

 

[boney]

Congrats all, very well done.

 

[CuriousMike]

1 Meese Ken K1200GT

Finishers bikes are roughed out to this (don't trust my addition):

FJR = 9
BMW R = 8
BMW K = 4
ST13 = 2

Triumph = 1
GSXR = 1
Bandit = 1
HD = 1

I guess I'm a little surprised there were no Goldwings represented ( a machine I "assume" is well suited for miles ) -- but sporttourers ruled the day.
Fewer ST's (11/13) and Harleys than I would expect. No Connies.

I suppose if I frequented the IronButt association site, I'd probably see a similar mix with BMW's heavily represented.

 

[CuriousMike]

This is pretty much exactly the route I ran:
http://tinyurl.com/Cal24PartA

http://tinyurl.com/Cal24PartB

That route looks good except for the first part ( heading to Hayward to get to Drakes Bay ) and the last part ( the Hwy 5 drone back home. )

Excellent job on the gizzer.

 

[NoGall]

Congrats, guys!!!

 

[budman]

This is pretty much exactly the route I ran:
http://tinyurl.com/Cal24PartA

Cool.... "P" must have been the tire change at THILL.....

 

[aciurczak]

I've put together a ride report for the 2009 Cal24 and posted the original up right here, but I'll cross-post it here on BARF as well as I appreciate that a few folks are following this thread directly.

________________

I've had time to rest a bit since getting home yesterday, and figured my head was clear enough, or at least as clear as it'll ever get, to put together a proper ride report for my 2009 Cal24. So here goes!

I was really looking forward to this one for a number of reasons, the primary one being that the rally start was less than 10 miles from my home. This made the logistics so much easier than in past years. No hotel room necessary, no packing the bike to stay over even one night as I'd just be leaving from our own garage in the morning, and after the event I know that can be home in bed in < 15 minutes. All good things, when it comes to a 24-hr rally! The high-level plan was similar to last year. A friend and I (Don Beaton) planned to ride together, and stay together as long as we both felt it was helping, with the understanding that either one of us could break off at any time with no hard feelings. Don got the hotel room in San Jose, so we'd be working in his room that Saturday morning to get the planning done before hitting the road.

Friday afternoon/evening was pretty uneventful. I arrived at tech inspection soon after it opened, knowing that the odometer check would be much easier not in traffic, and I could always come back home right afterwards to finish preparing the bike and gear for Saturday morning's ride start. The odo check was short loop down 101, 280, and back up 880 to the hotel, and the only interesting thing was that my odo was reading much lower than Don's, so our calibration would likely require mine to be shifted upwards and his downwards when looking for the true mileage. Looking at the final results sheet, that turned out to be the case, with my odo needing to be multiplied by 1.0146, and Don's to be multiplied by 0.9720. Most bikes tend to read high, but 3 or 4 on the rally read low, and a few lucky ones read spot-on. After getting all of my gear together, loading everything to the bike, and laying out anything else I needed for the morning, I went to sleep and set the alarm for a god-awful 3:45 AM.

Here's Tom and Mark checking us in on Friday:

Around the pool for the Friday night rider meeting:

Saturday morning I was up at the alarm, and on the bike by 4:30 AM heading to the hotel. Riders meeting was short and sweet, and for the first time I can remember, neither Mark nor Tom had any corrections to the instructions to be handed out. I'm told this is due to the very careful proofreading and pre-riding skills of Alan Pratt. We were given some of the "gotcha" instructions so we wouldn't be completely unprepared. One bonus would require a call ahead of 6 hours if we intended to chase it, just showing up on time would not be good enough. We could miss either or both checkpoints, but we'd need to call in during the checkpoint open window to let people know; we couldn't just let them know ahead of time. And we were reminded that there was another list of bonuses available near the end of the rally that we were not privy to as of yet. Don and I grabbed our packets, and headed upstairs with Dmitriy as well. Dmitriy was running his very first long-distance rally, and Don and I were happy to help. (As long as it didn't slow us down the slightest bit. )

Once in the room we got the laptops up and running and Don found out that his was completely unusable. Something went haywire with the video card and it wasn't going to fixable in the time allotted. Dmitriy and I both had 'em working away though. We found both checkpoints, got 'em into the GPS file, then started working on some of the base route points to help routing later. I was not having good luck with a few of the base route intersections down near Sequoia; the online and GPS maps have a hard time with roads that are named both as a named road and a numbered road. For highways there isn't an issue, but for some of the smaller roads that number/name translation isn't always accurate or even present, and it was a pain. I found that google maps and google earth were a little more robust in some of the searches, but the problem is google maps doesn't provide lat/lon, so you need to go to google earth to do the same thing, but sometimes the search there isn't as robust as on google maps. Technology. Argh. But the high point of the morning prep was when Don came across the Portland bonus and told me the he has done it in his truck a number of times in 10-11 hours. The Portland bonus was to "become a member of the Jeff Earls Fan Club". Jeff Earls has taken the top trophy at the Cal24 for the past 3 years running, but circumstances conspired to him not being able to run the 2009 event. But if we rode up to meet him at a pub in Portland to get his picture and autograph, we'd become a member of his fan club and also receive 9400ish points for our troubles. I plugged in the destination for that bonus and did some calculations, and came up with 670 miles if I remember correctly; and timewise it looked doable. We can leave at 0700, and need to be at the checkpoint between 1730 and 1830. 1730 seemed doable, and 1830 seemed very doable even if we were slowed by weather or another minor issue to deal with along with way. I did a rough calculation about what a top rider would get with the other points available in the rally if they didn't get Portland, and I came up with 8,000 as a guess. In retrospect, that turned out to be pretty accurate, as Jerry White, the highest-scoring non-Portland rider ended up with 8666 points. Since Portland alone was worth 9400ish (I forget the exact number), it seemed like getting it would immediately place a rider above anything possible on the base route. So as much as Don and I dread I-5, that became our plan. We had the bikes for it, we thought it was going to work out reasonably well at the scoring table if we could make it, so we set to work planning. We wrote up a small cheat sheet for everything we'd have to do to make it work:

- call before 1000 to let the rallymaster know we were going for Portland
- call between 1600 and 1800 to let the rallymaster know we weren't going to make Checkpoint1
- call between 0100 and 0300 to let the rallymaster know we weren't going to make Checkpoint2
- make it back to San Jose by 0700

and the unwritten but otherwise understood rule:

- don't screw up the fuel log.

So as dull as the mind gets when doing big miles on the slab, even us feeble-minded types could keep those 4 things in mind, and they were right at the top of our tankbag. If we completed it and nothing else, we'd end up with right around 10k points. Dmitriy was putting together a route that included a number of the Thread Bonii (Giant Muffler Men), and a freeway slog wasn't in the cards. We wished him well, repacked and suited up.

I didn't want to telegraph our plan to anybody in the parking lot, on the fear that perhaps some people were unsure if they'd go for Portland but would choose to do so after hearing other people were attempting it. So we all agreed to say nothing until it was a few hours into the rally when it would be too late anyway. As I was packing the bike AndyM let me and Tom Melchild know he was going for Portland, and asked what our plans were. I told him I was doing the Basic Route with a few tweaks. By 0658 Don and I were in gear waiting at the cones in the parking lot, and at 0700:00 we took off and were on our way onto the freeway and aiming to Portland.

Don and I definitely had the bikes to make this trip work. My R1200RT is pretty darned comfortable on the open road, and with music and communication on board, it can make a dull ride a little less dull. It also has electronic cruise, which makes keeping a constant speed that much easier over a very long ride. I set the cruise at a little over the speed limit, but no more than I'd ride/drive normally on I-5 in any other case. I didn't want to get second looks by any LEO's all the way up, and a single 30-minute unplanned stop on the side of the road for a ticket would make our chances that much less on making this work anyway. My bike has a comfortable fuel range of 250 miles, and Don's is somewhere around 200 miles, so we generally stopped every 200 miles or so to fuel up, and accomplish all of the other necessary fluid transfers. At one point along the way we had only made it a little over 100 miles when I had to get off for a particularly urgent need, and Don was laughing as he had the same, umm, need but wasn't going to be the wuss that pulled off first. :rotflmao: We were able to gas up there as well which meant we were soon back in motion for another 200 mile stint.

The whole way up the freeway we were all monitoring the GPS's to see how we stood. At 0700 it looked like we'd pull in at 1630, and throughout the day that varied very little. We'd get it down to 1620, but then after a stop it would go back up to 1630 or 1635, never changing more than 15 minutes in any direction. As we got closer we were more and more hopeful that this was going to work out. On the way north, we only ran into a little bit of weather. Some light rain, but not particularly hard and not for particularly long. The screens on both of our RT's can be adjusted on the fly to direct just about all the rain up or around the rider, so it wasn't uncomfortable at all. Vision can be somewhat of a problem, trying to get the screen situation just right so you're not looking through it but all rain is still going around you. I found at times that my helmet visor would get a little too hard to see clearly, and putting the windscreen all the way down for a few seconds allowed the wind speed to clear the visor, even if it was still raining a bit. We came upon a few other riders heading northbound as well. We saw AndyM somewhere in Oregon, and also hooked up with Andrew Bainbridge for the last stretch before pulling into Portland.

Three of us at the time pulled into the parking lot of the Lucky Labrador pub at 1650, about 40 minutes early. AndyM had pulled in just a few minutes prior, and Tim Watts was also there just a few minutes prior. Unfortunately, the man of the hour, Jeff Earls, was nowhere to be seen. So we wondered if we had found the sucker bonus, and had ridden 670 miles one-way to be stood up. But I took out the laptop and went to sit inside to start planning for the next part of the rally. Don and I hadn't initially planned to make Checkpoint 2, but now that we were here, running some calculations showed it to be possible. Not easy, and there would be even less slack time than what we just did to make Portland, but doable. And it was worth 1000 points, more than almost any other single bonus left on the sheet, so it was definitely worth considering. As of 1710 when we were sitting at the pub, my GPS gave me an ETA of 0140 in Napa. And we hadn't even met Jeff yet. We looked over some of the other bonii, like the Jelly Belly factory in Fairfield and some of the ones on the peninsula like Alice's and Pescadero. But the one that I wanted to keep in mind was the 2800-point bonus still left if we could make it to Summit & 17 by 0500 the next morning. That bonus was listed as 7x400 points, said that it would require a hard ride of at least 70 minutes, that could take as long as 100 minutes, and to keep in mind that the rally ends in San Jose at 0700. The Summit bonus was open from 0500 to 0600, but it sure sounded like if you didn't get there close to 0500 it might not be a worthwhile use of time. I managed to get the Summit bonus location on the laptop, and pushed it to the GPS's for later use...

Jeff Earls pulled into the parking lot at 1730, and was immediately mobbed by a bunch of tired and sweaty motorcyclists. He took it in stride, and quickly signed our sheets and posed for pictures:

At one of the gas stops Don had called ahead and a past Cal24 rider who now lives in Oregon, Dave Peterson, also met us at the pub. Thanks, Dave!

 

[aciurczak]

Don and I re-packed, suited up, and we were back on our way. I'd have to confirm on the GPS track, but I don't think we were actually rolling until around 1745 at the earliest, and maybe closer to 1750. Leaving Portland there was a train of 4 or 5 bikes all heading in the same direction and riding together as we left the city behind. Don & I peeled off in 15 or 20 minutes though for gas, as we hadn't filled up prior to making it to the Lucky Lab and his tank was getting pretty low. At that point the riders were split up again to make the trek down I-5. Though only a few minutes later we waved at Andrew Bainbridge while we saw him and his famous jacket on the side of the road chatting amiably with Oregon's finest.

While I was riding along I set up some test routes on the Zumo, all of them aiming toward Checkpoint2, but then going to Summit directly or to Summit via some other bonuses like Alices. While we were motoring down the freeway, Checkpoint2 still looked doable, but ETA was in the 0230 - 0245 range, and we'd get nada at 0300. Actually, we'd have to pull over and calll by 0259 otherwise we'd not only get nada, we'd get -1000 points for missing it and not calling. The additional routes showed me getting to Summit at 0450 if I left the Checkpoint instantaneously and went the Alice's route, and at 0420 if I left the Checkpoint and instead headed straight to Summit. None of those ETA's take into account the time needed to actually get the bonuses, so I knew that the most likely option was to head straight to Summit and forget the rest.

And then it was just a matter of doing it. Don and I kept trucking along, 200miles at a time. Once we ran his gas a little lower than we wanted when we got either some bad gas or more headwinds and fuel mileage was down. I was seeing 34 mpg instead of 38-40 on that stretch, even at the same speeds we were doing all day, so something was up. But we didn't run out and managed to find gas without backtracking or otherwise losing too much time. Saw some rainbows coming south as it was starting to mist a little, and I wished I had a camera accessible on the bike while I was riding. Soon after finding Don that gas in Wolf Creek, OR, we went from clear weather to a little misting. The sun had gone down awhile ago, and from this point forward we'd be riding in the dark. Grants Pass was a little hairy. The light misting transitioned to full-on rain, with enough dumping on us that cars were leaving wakes in the road and spitting up huge sprays across the roadway, making visibility extremely difficult. No fun in a car. No fun at all on a bike. Really really no fun on a bike at night in construction zones in between jersey barriers at 60+ mph and afraid to go any slower as the following traffic might not even notice you before it was too late. Picking up lane markers on the road was tough, and it was really about following the taillights of the car ahead and hoping that they weren't about to do something stupid. Don had the identical issues, except instead of a car ahead he was using my taillights for the exact same purpose. For me, that was the hairiest section of the rally. No matter how tired I was at the time, I can assure folks that I've never been more alert and on edge on a bike as I was for those 10 or 15 minutes. But all good things come to an end and as we descended on the other side the weather cleared up almost immediately.

From that point until the checkpoint there's not much else to report. AndyM caught up to us at one point, and we saw another rider or two also heading in the same direction. It was a challenge to stay focused and on target, but with the GPS's to concentrate on, the music to help, and always having another rider in sight either in front or behind, I believe it was easier for me than if it had been a solo trek. We pulled into Napa right around 0245, and I led the group of 4 riders at that point (we'd hooked up with another rider or two near the checkpoint) down a dead-end street just near the checkpoint. Damn GPS's and their not completely up-to-date maps. One of the other riders flipped a quicik u-turn and led us back around to the other end of that street and we pulled into the checkpoint with about 10 minutes to spare. Ken Anderson was manning the checkpoint along with Mike Heran, and we got our sheets signed off for successfully making it. Then we had to decide what to do next. My GPS was saying I could make the Summit location at 0430 if I went there directly, and it looked attractive to me. 2800 possible points, but a "hard ride of 70+ minutes and possibly 100 minutes" did sound a little ominous after 22 hours of saddle time. Andy and Don felt that was just not going to happen for them, so they made a plan to hit a bonus they both knew well in the Marin headlands, then head back to the barn. I wished them good luck, and headed out on my own from Napa to Los Gatos. At this point I was pretty much on auto-pilot. I was back on roads I knew well, and this 96 mile stretch to get there should be cake compared to what we'd already accomplished. And it was. The biggest issue was my iPod conked out along the way, but I can deal with little tragedies like that. I pulled in to the Summit/17 intersection at 0430 and went looking for the parking lot. Didn't find it on one side, and then another bike pulled up (Tim Watts), and we both found it on the other side of the freeway. Was a little interesting as there were several police cars with lights on right in the parking lot, having some type of animated discussion with a Los Gatos citizen parked in the same parking lot. No idea what it was about, and I gotta say that Tim and I probably weren't too interested at that point. I was mainly annoyed that I had to wait for the LEO's to leave so I could find a nearby bush without getting taken in for indecent exposure at 0450. Luckily they left with about 10 minutes to spare, so I was a little more prepared for the bonus sheet we were about to receive. Alan Pratt was manning this bonus, and he let us know that he could tell us nothing until 0500, and he was a man of his word. Until then Tim and I tried to figure out what some of the possibilities were, but we weren't even close. At 0500, Alan handed us both 2 more sheets, and we were on our way. This last section was one of those "follow these instructions" games:

- Get on the highway going north, exit after you go under the 4th bridge
- make a right at the 2nd stoplight, then a left at the third stop sign

etc. No place names, no waypoints, impossible to program into a GPS in any way. And it was fun as hell. It took me on a great loop up around Hicks, Uvas, and working around McKean. There were some questions along the way to answer, and each was worth 400 points. The entire time I had both of my GPS's aiming toward home base, so as soon as the ETA got to 0645, my plan was to bolt for home so as not to risk the penalty points (100 point penalty for every minute after 0700). I was riding these fun roads reasonably swiftly, knowing that there wasn't going to be alot of slack time, and the ETA did in fact keep creeping up as I went along, from 0600, to 0615, 0620, 0630, and I almost got to the point where I was going to bail. But then I started to see that the recommended GPS route was going down the same route that the instructions were taking me anyway, so I relaxed and concentrated on getting all of the bonus questions. The very last one was a doozy. "How many lakes or reservoirs have you passed since you started this bonus section?" Damn. Sure would have been nice to have read that before I started riding this section. I guessed 6, turned out to be 5. From the little I heard, none of the other few riders who did the Summit bonus got that last one, but perhaps someone did. I know I didn't and the eventual winner didn't either. And I was very relieved to also find out that the margin between us was well over 400 points, so whether I got that one or not my finishing order wouldn't have changed a whit.

After this extra loop I found myself back on 101 and heading north to the rally end, and I pulled in around 0640. I was happy to see Don and Andy already there, so they made it back safely as well. In fact, every single rider made it back safe and sound, which I think is a testament to not only the rally organization and planning, but also the quality of the riders that are attracted to this thing. 27,000+ miles in one 24-hr stretch is not trivial without even the smallest of incidents on a bike, and we pulled it off. I got my paperwork together, gathered all of my fuel receipts, and got in line to be scored. After scoring I got back on the bike, went home, took a quick shower, set the alarm for 1130, and fell asleep pretty much immediately. At what seemed like 10 seconds later, my alarm went off and I got ready to head back for the banquet.

Team Ciurczak attended the banquet as a family, once again something that was easy to do as it was so close. Annie got to see some of the folks she met at past banquets and even past rallies (we did the 2006 event 2-up), and the little monster enjoyed some blueberry pie.

Tom and Mark m/c'd the festivities, in Cal24 tradition counting down from the last successful finisher to the eventual rally winner:

But there were also the equally traditional "Special Recognition" awards, including a number of Honorable Mentions. To avoid being recognized in this manner I learned a couple things to tuck away for next year. Two that stuck with me are:

- There are at least two Woodlake's in California. If it's vitally important that you get to one, make sure it's the right one.
- Avoid questionable mexican restaurants the night before a 24-hr rally

During the countdown, while announcing the results for the 14th place rider, Tom mentioned that he was the only Portland rider to not finish in the top-ten, so from that point forward I was getting a little more optimistic about a decent finish. It turns out that Jerry White (top-scoring non-Portland rider this year), in addition to being a hell of a guy, is also a good prognosticator and had posted up on the Cal24 site a prediction that I'd finally make my first podium, and I was very happy to find out I finished the rally in 2nd place, with Don and Andy finishing right at the top as well, in 3rd and 4th. We had a good plan, rode it well, and it paid off. but it paid off handsomely as well for the rider at the top of the charts, Ken Meese. From what I can tell we ended up doing very similar rides, but he was likely able to use some of the time I was sitting in Portland planning in order to find just a few extra small bonuses that ended up winning the rally for him.

Here's me and Don:

Here's AndyM, Dimitriy, and me again (all "BARF" riders):

Ken Meese, the 2009 winner:

My route:

Final results are posted up right here on the www.cal24.com website, and more and more pictures should be up there in the next few days. Here's a link to all of my pictures from this 2009 event. Thanks for reading along this far, and if anyone has any questions about my 2009 ride or the Cal24 at all, please post away.

Here are pics of the BARF shirts that Budman put together for this year's Cal24 event. Thanks again, Dennis!

- Alex

 

[budman]

What an awesome write up Alex

Cal 24 .. Oregon... West Coast 24

Since it was a countdown.. only you and Meese were left.. bet you were nervous...

Congrats on an awesome job

Enjoyed the read.. enjoyed the wife's posts.. enjoy the kid showing us who is his number 1

You rocked it man!

 

[boney]

Thanks for the write-up. You make it awefully difficult to not commit myself to next year's rally.

 

[aciurczak]

More ride reports from other participants are starting to show up right here. For me it's quite interesting to read not only what routes and bonuses (bonii?) they chose, but also how they came to choose 'em and how different things worked out for them along the way. Some of the on-the-fly changes in plan are also pretty instructive for me, as people who have been doing this a long time very often do find ways to optimize or even completely change their plan while under way to maximize their points.

 

[aciurczak]

We learned a bit more about Ken Meese's ride today. Turns out that at first he wasn't going to go for Portland, instead working on a route to complete the thread bonus. But after getting a few of them, he changed tack and then headed to Portland. So he was going up on 101 quite aways, and cut over to I-5 all the way up in Medford, OR. Every bonus I got, he got as well, and he also got a few of the Muffler Men on the way up, and a few small pointers near Napa and Rio Vista. Fantastic ride by him, and in fact he has taken first place in all three of the long-distance 24-hr rallies he's competed in this year.

 

[plumber]

What happened to Eric Jewell? I saw he had a DNF with zero miles.

 

[aciurczak]

What happened to Eric Jewell? I saw he had a DNF with zero miles.

He received one of the oops awards. This was his crime:

- Avoid questionable mexican restaurants the night before a 24-hr rally

He got mild food poisoning. He still made it to the first checkpoint before saying the hell with it and coming back to the hotel. You can imagine the puns at his expense at the banquet. ("Eric, sounds like you had a sh*tty rally", "Now that's a final drive problem", and many more).

 

[aciurczak]

I mapped out this year's base route in a GPX file, here's what it looked like:

In the file I laid out each leg separately, but also have another track that has the whole enchilada connected together.

Google Maps format:

Leg 1
Leg 2
Leg 3
Leg 4 with last bonus
Leg 4 without last bonus

Base route with last bonus came out to 1039 miles. : Looks like I can't add the gpx file directly to this post; if anyone wants it just PM me.

 

[MissMoxy]

Thanks aciurczak for writing your account of the experience. Now I know what's in store

 

[aciurczak]

Ken Meese, the winner of the 2009 event, just posted up his ride report. Phenomenal ride, and I have no idea how he left Portland after me, hit a bonus or two on the way down, and still arrived at the Napa checkpoint earlier than I did.