2002 Land of Enchantment 1000
What the heck am I doing here? “Here” was about 40 miles east of Cloudcroft, NM. Now this is a great motorcycling road most of the time with all kinds of curves and elevation changes, but this was around one in the a.m. and I had already been on the bike for approximately 18 hours. I was looking for a wide spot in the road by the name of “Hope” to get a picture of the city limit sign. I had to be back in Albuquerque by 7 a.m. and still had to go to Roswell and Vaughn. Oh? Why am I having to do this? And at an UNGODLY hour of the day? That’s easy. I was having fun. No, no, really I am. I was a participant in the 2002 Land of Enchantment motorcycle endurance rally hosted by Jeff Foster, Ira Agins and their hearty band of volunteers.
This was my second Land of Enchantment (LOE), and after last year’s rally I made a promise to myself not to ever, ever put my mind and body through that ordeal ever again. To paraphrase a popular commercial “The mind is a terrible thing”, and mine quickly forgot the low points of last year’s ride and recalled all the good ones, of which there were many. I rode last years rally with several friends from south Texas and anytime we got together all we would talk about were certain incidents that happened to us on the 2001 LOE. The cow standing on the shoulder of the road just west of Tierra Amarilla in open range country was almost surreal. When I saw the cow I was reminded of the lady at the pre-rally rider’s meeting that had just recently had a close encounter of the bovine kind. I promised to eat more beef to help rid mankind of this horrible scourge. No cows were seen on the road this year, thank you very much. I didn’t even see a deer on this year’s LOE, however I did see several unidentified rodents scurrying through the bar-ditches.
What’s the LOE endurance rally you ask? This year’s LOE was quite a bit different than last year’s. Last year we had one base route that was followed by about 90 percent of the riders. This year we were given 4 loops or trails as they were called by Ira. Each trail was worth x amount of points. Some trails were worth more points than others. Trail points were just something else to consider when staying up all night making your choices. Each trail was at least 500 miles. You needed to do 2 trails to be considered a finisher and of course be awarded the Iron Butt Association’s Saddlesore 1000. Each trail had 3 to 5 towns in it that you had to visit and prove you were there by obtaining a time, dated, gas receipt with hopefully an address on it. Or you could take a Polaroid picture of the post office with your rally towel in the foreground. I almost forgot the rally towel. We were each given a small towel with the rally logo and our rider # on it. If a picture was called for we had to have our towel in the picture and the scorer’s had to be able to see your rider # in the picture. Okay now we’ve got the towel out of the way lets talk bonuses. I use the term bonuses instead of bonii and look forward to clarification by any English majors that may read this. Anyway besides visiting the 3 to 5 mandatory towns in the trails you could also obtain more points by going to a bonus location. To prove you were at a bonus might require a picture, a receipt or maybe something else. The further out of route the bonus was the more points it was worth. After completing one trail you were encouraged to return to the rally host motel in Albuquerque between 5 and 9 p.m. Oh, the starting time was 7 a.m. so you had between 10 and 14 hours to get back to the motel and keep all your bonus points. Trail points weren’t lost if you didn’t make it back to the motel, but some of your bonus points would be penalized.
I (on a 2000 SE Goldwing) arrived in Albuquerque on Thursday, Oct. 3rd in the afternoon with some friends from south Texas. Greg Yarborough (1800 Goldwing) and Jim Morin (BMW K12LT) who would do the entire rally with me, Janice Morin, Jim’s wife would be a volunteer at the rally, Jim and Neville Crews that came to see the balloon fiesta. Friday morning was spent visiting various motorcycle dealers and lusting after new bikes. Friday afternoon was time for tech inspection and riding an odometer check. We were required to have certain items on the bike (first aid kit, tire repair kit, strobe light, etc.) and all the requisite paperwork, (ins, title, etc.) Right before the odo check a couple of guys rode up that I had been looking forward to meeting. I had become acquainted with Jeff Salyer and Jason Jonas on the Motorcycle Tourer’s Forum via the internet and was glad to see that they were entered in the LOE. After some introductions it was time to ride the odo check. The odo check was a 26 mile round trip to help the rally folk allow for any corrections needed for your odometer. Jeff and Jason were ahead of me and Greg and I left about 5 minutes later. We needed to connect to I-40 east which was about a ¼ mile away. When we got to the on ramp traffic was stopped and backed up. “Hope it isn’t one of our guys” I told Greg on the radio. Crap!!! It was!! I could see a police car at the end of the ramp with several motorcycles on the other side of it. As we barely crept by I saw Jason wiping some blood off his nose and his beautiful silver 1800 Gold Wing was on its side. (Expletive deleted) Jason’s rally was over before it started. Bikers and cops waved us by and told us not to stop, that everything was under control. Later I found out that (correct if I’m wrong here Jason) that as Jason was entering the on ramp (construction had forced the right lane of the interstate over into the acceleration lane) he glanced over his shoulder to check for a gap in traffic, spotted a gap and sped up, however the car in front of him had come to a complete stop. I would like to state here that Jason was completely geared up, full faced helmet, Kilimanjaro jacket, etc. and I did find out later that he has a hairline fracture on one of his wrists. Jeff Salyer who was somewhat behind him and stopped to help said that Jason was more concerned with the driver of the car than he was for his own well-being. I also found out later that Jason’s bike (the Hondapottamus) was totaled by the insurance company. I’m sorry I didn’t mean to write so much about Jason’s incident but it was part of my trip.
I did have some good highlights later on. I got to meet Ardys Kellerman, Rick Morrison, Jim Frens, Bill Smith, Don Angell and others. I did see some folks from Oregon pull up during the odo check. There was a guy (Ken Morton) on a GL 500 and a gal (Janene Benfield) on a Suzuki Bandit 600. They must’ve trailered, surely they didn’t ride those bikes to New Mexico from Oregon. I found out later that indeed they did ride all the way to Albuquerque to ride another 1000 miles in the rally. Ken on the GL 500 was entered in the “Hopeless Class” in the rally. This class was for bikes 500 cc and under or over 25 years in age, the bike not the rider.
At 7 p.m. Friday evening the pre-rally meeting was held. This is where rules and commonsense are discussed and the rally packs are handed out. Questions are also answered at this time. One question that I didn’t think was very important turned out to be VERY important later on. From the back of the room I heard asked “is there any penalty for riding three trails?” Sheesh, yeah right, I thought. “No way” I thought, could anyone do over 1500 miles riding through mountains, towns and balloon festivals and get back to Albuquerque 24 hours later. I WAS WRONG!! This could be my life theme. Anyway we’ll get back to the three trails thing later. I would like to commend the rallymasters for reminding the riders of what’s really important, not winning the rally by doing unsafe or stupid things but of family and friends. This reminded me of what I wanted to accomplish this rally. 1. Don’t do anything stupid, 2. Don’t DNF (See #1), 3. have a good time, (this was a week out my vacation) and 4. Finish respectably ( I was shooting for a top 20).
Back in the motel room poring over trails, bonuses, maps, sticky dots, a laptop that didn’t want to work took about 2 hours for Greg, Jim and I to come up with our choice of 2 trails. During the day we would take the southwest trail having to hit the towns of Socorro, Reserve, and Silver City. The second trail would take us to Carrizozo, Alamogordo, Roswell, and Vaughn. We would look at picking up bonuses along the way as we saw how we were doing on time. Off to bed, thank god for Ambien! This was after I set all redundant wake-up systems, wake up call with front desk, alarm clock, and screaming meanie. The meanie was set for 5 minutes after everything else, I didn’t want to wake up the competition.
I slept for 6 hours, got up at five and started getting ready. I’d already programmed the GPS, left my hydration system on the bike overnight to cool off. I dressed for cold weather, it was around 40 degrees at wake up time. My plan was to dress warmly and take off layers during the day, I knew I’d need to put those layers back on by nightfall. We lined the bikes up at 6 a.m. in rows of three, think an Indy car race and went to breakfast at the motel restaurant.
At 5 minutes til 7 I was warming up the bike and ready to go. I was in the middle of the front row. The quickest way out was to leave the parking lot and make a left. Greg, Jim and I decided to go right and avoid the crowd. Ira had already warned us that anyone crashing at the first turn might as well park their bike, their rally would be over.
At exactly 7 a.m. Jeff set off the screamin meanie (the rallymaster’s version of a starter’s pistol) and off we went. I was in the front row and couldn’t see the other riders however I think the start went smoothly. We still ended up getting behind a few riders after making the block but it wasn’t too bad. We rode I-40 west to I-25 south to Socorro, about 75 miles. This was a long uneventful stretch; we pulled into an Exxon in Soccoro (this was a mandatory town in the trail) and got the much needed receipt. There were a couple of other riders filling up also, I think one may have been Ken on the GL 500. I have to say here that you can spot an endurance rider a mile away by his uniform and bike. He (or she) is usually wearing a full-face helmet, Aerostitch or similar cordura clothing; they have a tank bag, hydration system and are constantly hounding unsuspecting gas station attendants for receipts. Back to the ride, we rode west on 60 to the Very Large Array, (our first bonus). If you haven’t seen this it’s kind of cool. It’s a lot, and I mean a lot of radio telescope satellite dishes mounted on railroad tracks. We had to take a Polaroid with our towel in it along with three satellites visible in the picture. Continuing west on 60 we went to the Datil post office and took another picture. Another rallyist on a Valkyrie had stopped at the post office and I took his picture while he held his towel. The Valkryie had to stop and get gas (those darn six carbs) in Datil. We decided against the Pie Town and Quemado bonuses and headed south on hwy 12 to Reserve (mandatory trail stop). We decided against the aforementioned bonuses to allow us more time to get to the bonus rich southern New Mexico area. The one gas station in Reserve didn’t have pumps with receipts so we had the clerk fill out hand-written ones with his signature. We headed south on 180 for a hundred miles to Silver City. This was the most scenic part of our both our trails. I had no idea that western New Mexico was so pretty, but it was. Mountain vistas with wide sweepers, we got trapped behind a couple of sightseers but were able to get around them in a climbing lane. We came into Silver City (mandatory trail town) and started unlayering, it was getting hot. Jim, Greg and I had already decided to go for the point rich Deming bonus as it was only 50 miles away and we had put some time in the bank by by-passing the Pie Town and Quemando bonuses. It was a nice, wide, straight two lane all the way to Deming. We got the needed receipt for a bonus and got out our maps. “Its only 32 miles to the Columbus bonus”, Jim said. “Uh, I don’t know Jim, that means a 64 mile round trip and we still have to get back to Albuquerque this evening”, I whined. I was worried about not having enough time to do a second trail. My strategy was to ride like hell during the day and have a more leisurely ride at night when I knew we’d be worn out. “What the hell”, I said, “let’s go for it.” If you don’t know where Columbus, NM is get out your map and look as far south in New Mexico as you can. It sits on the Mexican border due south of Deming. We had already gone 400 miles and would have over 270 to go to get back to the motel for the check in if we wanted to keep all our bonus points. We made it to Columbus without incident and took our pictures of “Pancho Villa State Park” entrance sign and hightailed it back to Deming, then over to Hatch on Hwy 26. There was a bonus in Hatch. Hatch is know for growing chili peppers, so we had to bring back a chili product and its accompanying receipt. As we approached Hatch you could see peppers hanging on fences, porches and the like. This will be easy I thought. At the first convenience store in town I ran in and asked if they stocked any chili products. “Huh? Chili products? What chili products?” I was reminded of a story that Todd Witte told during his write up of this years Butt Lite about asking a local for direction to a nearby state park and how the locals usually have no knowledge as to what you’re talking about. We asked for directions to a local grocery store and one was pointed out a block away. Right in the front part of the store was a rack stocked with almost all the products in the world that had been dipped in chili. I ended up spending 99cents for some chili plums, yummy!!! Hope the rallymasters like them. This was our last bonus on this leg. We arrived back at the motel at 5:57 p.m. We were asked if we wanted to take the optional one hour rest bonus worth almost 200 points. We said “HELL YES”. Our odometer readings were recorded and we left the bikes parked and went to the motel restaurant and ate. This was much better than power bars. During the rest break I tried unsuccessfully to fix Greg’s broken communication cord. He was able to hear but not transmit. We also went back to our room and tried to get about 15 minutes rest. We didn’t get much rest but I like this strategy by the rallymasters of getting the riders off their bikes for awhile. There is no doubt that this break helped me make it through the second trail.
Loop One
6:57 p.m. and Jim, Greg and I are back on the scooters heading back south to Socorro AGAIN. I had to stop and fuel up then we jumped back off the interstate and headed east to Carrizozo on 380. It was very dark by that time and I was very wary of critters, however I didn’t see any. In Carrizozo (mandatory trail stop) we fueled up and went south on 54 to Alamagordo. This was the crappiest road on the whole rally, that I rode on. The road was milled up and had edge traps for 34 miles. I was very glad to see Alamagordo (mandatory trail stop) appear. We rode into town quite a ways to find a gas station that was in Alamagordo proper. There were suburbs all around and I didn’t want to fill up and get a receipt that said something like “Alamogordo Heights”. When it comes to receipts I tend to be pretty picky. We had decided to go east on 82 to nab a bonus in Cloudcroft, where this story began. We looked all around for the Cloudcroft bonus and couldn’t find it. We figured that it must be something you can only find during the day. We also blew off the Sunspot Observatory bonus; it was about 20 miles south and west of Cloudcroft on a twisty, switchback type road at midnight. No thank you. I didn’t want to waste my energy just yet, as I knew I need my reserves for the final stretch. So onwards east on 82 we went. This in itself is quite a ride, Cloudcroft sits at 9000 feet in elevation. So we had quite a bit of mountain riding to do in the dark. Seventy miles east of Cloudcroft sits the small town of Hope. I wish you could have seen us trying to get a picture of the city limit sign. What a laugh riot. These signs are made to reflect light. So all you would get would be a shot of a bright white rectangle with your rally towel proudly displayed below it. We finally did figure it out by standing at an angle to the sign. This probably killed about 20 minutes and was our last bonus for the rally.
We rode up to Roswell (mandatory trail stop) and Vaughn (mandatory trail stop). It was cold on the final stretch and I had my electrics turned up full blast. Greg and I got back to the motel at 6 a.m. Jim had pulled off at Clines Corners to take a break for a minute while we continued on. We got checked in and later in the morning my points were totaled. Greg and I tried to get some rest before the banquet but gave up and packed the bikes for the trip home.
Loop Two
The banquet started around noonish and I had a good time. Adam Bliven sat at our table and I had the pleasure of visiting with him about his rally experience. Without a lot of fanfare, the rallymasters took over and asked if anyone had anything interesting happen to them that they would like to share with the other rallyists. Don Angell told of his experience at Shiprock, NM where there was some kind of Native American celebration going on that prohibited his obtaining the Shiprock bonus. I kept my mouth shut however I had discovered something new concerning my rally strategy and will reveal it here for the first time, drum roll please: Women’s bathrooms. I had to use women’s bathrooms three times on this rally as the men’s were occupied when I needed them. I walked past one guy in Carrizozo that told me that he was in line for the bathroom and I headed for the women’s. You should see the neat stuff they have in there. Microwaves, big screen t.v.s and much, much more. Anyway this is my new strategy until I get arrested anyway. But I digress, the countdown got to the top twenty. I was hoping for a top twenty and my name hadn’t been called yet. Ira got to 15 and still I hadn’t been called. 14, 13, 12th was Greg Yarborough, 11th ME!!! 10th was Jim Morin. I was elated. This rally was full of top dogs and I was tickled to be this close to the top ten. I found out later that the difference between 1st and 2nd place was 3 points. The 2nd place rider went over 1600 miles and earned a bun burner gold. The first place winner, Dick Peek rode 1407 miles. Greg, Jim and I went 1260 miles and had the same amount of points. Since the rally I’ve been sent an updated finishers list and was moved up to 9th.
I would like to use this last paragraph to thank Jeff, Ira, Ardys, Rick, Janice and all the other rally volunteers that put this event on. I would heartily recommend this rally for experienced and novice rallyists. There is something for everyone here. I would like to thank Jim and Greg for riding with me and adding to the enjoyment of the rally. I would like to thank my wife Jo Ann for supporting me and encouraging me and for listening to all the corny stories after I got home. Oh on the way home I got Greg’s cord working, sheesh, great timing. A big thanks goes out to the weather gods, I didn’t hit any rain until Monday on the way home.
To Jeff and Ira, I will not, repeat not be back next year. Yeah right.
Dewayne Finn
Rider #116