Blackfly 1600 Report
August 10 & 11, 2002.
T minus 53 hours: Leave home on my fully-packed bike. It's never been so loaded. I even brought the kitchen sink, erm... I mean laptop computer just in case our esteemed rallymaster decided to give out some bonus locations the night before the rally. I guess I could input them directly into the GPS but with the laptop I can play with Streets & Trips the night before the rally instead of sleeping :)
I leave Fredericton at 04:00 AM and have a route plan that carries me through Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York state then through Ontario to sleep in Ottawa that night. The ride takes me through some of the most beautiful roads I've ever ridden on. The United States really puts Canada to shame with its nicely paved twisty roads that feel they were built by fellow motorcycle riders.
Make it to Ottawa that night (1 184 km later) and spend the night drinking beer and playing 'GT 3' on PlayStation 2 with some friends. The next day I get going a bit later than anticipated and arrive in North Bay shortly after one o'clock in the afternoon following some more nice twisty roads along the scenic route to North Bay (651 k m instead of the 400 or so had I taken the more direct (read boring) highway 17.
I tell myself that these last two days of riding were among the best quality motorcycling I've ever done, beautiful weather, beautiful roads and the feeling that there's plenty more to come...
T-Minus 20 hours: Tech inspection (bike passes easily, I've put on 2 new tires specially for the rally). Fuel cell is fine. Life is good. Finish this off with a 'slow race', where you take as long as you can between 2 lines without putting your foot down. You get a point for each second you take and lots of penalties for touching the floor. This is to insure no one will finish with a tie. I'm pretty happy with my ride, 24 seconds...
T minus 14 hours: We have a barbecue on the Friday night and Peter Hoogeveen hands out some envelopes containing the mandatory checkpoints for the rally. He says that no matter what we do or where we decide to go during the rally, we MUST get these ones done or we don't qualify as finishers. Shortly after that the barbecue ends and each goes off to their rooms to sleep / plan. I take the laptop out and start playing with numbers. The bonuses must be done in order in a counter-clockwise fashion. I input them into Streets & Trips and this is what I get
According to Streets & Trips, the base route is about 1 600 km, or 1 000 miles. After reading some reports from the previous years I was hoping for 'The Big Radisson Bonus' and have the opportunity to go up north to James Bay. From what Peter said, there would be no way this would be doable, with the base route, a side-trip to Radisson would total out at about 3 200 km. Once you've factored in the time stopped to find the checkpoints you're way over 24 or 26 hours and that's if all goes well...
I was sure I had figured it out. He would offer a huge bonus if we went the long way around from checkpoint 2 to 3 by going way east to Lac St-Jean. According to the mapping software, this would give a total of about 2 550 km, difficult but achievable. This was going to be my plan of action for the rally.
I'm really excited and nervous by now. This is my first ever rally experience. I met several riders who were there for the rally. They all seem serious. Not serious as in not fun to be around, but serious as in they know what they're getting themselves into and they're not going to drop out after ten hours in the saddle. Most have more experience than me but that's okay, I'm here to learn, not to take home trophies. Just checking out all the bikes with all the gizmos (or 'farkles' as the LD community refers to them) on them for going long distances was worth the price of admission. I came out of there with several good ideas for the future. I'm a bit surprised at the number of non-LD Riding-looking-bikes in the field. Of course there were several BMW's, ST1100's, Goldwings, but there was also a 1000 Hurricane, an R1 and a R6 and a couple of elderly Suzukis that looked as if they had a few interesting stories to tell.
Time to sleep.
C'mon, sleep damn you !
T-Minus 3 hours: It's 6 AM and my alarm won't go off for another half hour. I've been awake since 5:15 and finally decide to get out of bed. Nervous ? Me ?
T-Minus 1 hour: 8 AM, in the parking lot of North Bay Cycle, our starting point. Sipping coffee. Bike is fueled up for the ride. Tick Tick Tick
T-Minus 30 minutes: The rallymaster (or RallyBastard as he calls himself) Hoogeveen hands us the 'B-list bonuses'. These consist of about 30 or so sites at varying distances from the main route that we can attempt to get. I quickly go through them looking for the 'Big One' but alas, the biggest bonus in the package is for a measly 500 points. Crap. Next is the 'C-list bonuses' or exponential bonuses. 2 years ago he had people hunting for Jehovah's Witnesses places and the winners ultimately were the ones who found the most of these. The theme this year would be 'Police Stations', kind of putting a new spin and having us hunt down cops instead of the other way around. The next 27 minutes are spent frantically trying to find the bonus locations on the maps and thinking of a game plan. I decided 'Police Station' would be my game plan.
T-Minus 3 minutes: All right, he deserves the name RallyBastard. Mr. Hoogeveen calls us up again to let us know that he wanted to mimic last year's Iron Butt Rally with this one. There was one last bonus he wanted to share with us. For 50 000 points, we could go for a ride to a place called 'Parent', about 300 km north of Montreal. Oh and by the way, it's a dirt road.
T-Minus 2 minutes and forty seconds: Found Parent on the map. It's really in the middle of nowhere. This is sick. My bike's never fallen down. My bike doesn't have any scratches on it. On the other hand, I signed up for this to be an adventure. Giddy up !