Riders who registered for the 2011 rally are still registered, and will getting an email in July with the 2012 updates. New riders will be able to register and download the new rally info in July as well.

Where is the Rally? It’s everywhere! Wherever you are you can ride along. Take a look at the 2011 Rules and the 2011 Rally Packet to see the score sheets and rally log. To get an idea of how to plan your rally take a look at Planning Your Rally Ride and to ride along on a rally ride check out Riding Your Rally.

In the meantime – Go Ride!

I’ll post back here when I get the numbers put together.

New Sweden Lutheran Church - First Stop of the day

Kevo

To report your scores just go to the Rally Score Sheet and fill out the form. The scoring form will be open until Midnight September 11 and I’ll be putting the scores together on Monday September 12. I hope to get the ranking list, scores, and list of drawing winners out Monday evening so hopefully you won’t need to wait too long.

I’ll post back with updates as I get stuff done

Kevo

Registration is now closed. I’ll be sending out the last emails with rally numbers and rally packets later today. We have gotten a few emails which bounced – so if you haven’t gotten your rally packet you can download the forms on the Rally Packet Page and find your rally number on the Rally Roster.

When you complete your rally you don’t need to send in your rally log, tomorrow there will be a Rally Score Sheet available here where you’ll report your score. We’re only asking for one picture from each rallier – your best picture – and with almost 300 registered rally riders that should be plenty for a good ride report!

I would encourage everyone who is interested to put together a ride report for the motorcycle forum you frequent (Soviet Steeds, Russian Iron, IMWA, ADV, etc).

And here’s a deal from Logan at Logan’s Valley Motorcycles -

Loan's Valley Motorcycles Rally Shirt

These Rally shirts can be purchased for $25ea. thru paypal, info@logansmc.com, just give him the size(mens sizes only sorry), figure $25 plus $4.95 shipping, total $29.95.
All proceeds from the sale of these shirts go directly back to those that purchased a shirt. If 100 people buy the shirt, $2500 in gift certificates go back to the players!!!
Also, you can check it out on Logan’s Valley Motorcycles Facebook page.

Everyone ride safe – See you on the road!

Kevo

Security Director - Max

I know we’re all doing this for fun – but our friends at IMWA are putting up some actual swag for prizes. Here’s how this will work. When the rally is finished, and everyone has entered their final points I, and my security dreictor Max, will pull 30 names of rally finishers from a hat.  (you need 350 points to finish). We’ll send those names on to IMWA, and they’ll send out your prize. Just as a note – I am immune to bribes – but Max wanted me to mention that he can be bought with beef bones, catfish, fried eggs, or just about anything he can fit in his mouth.

Front

Back

Prize winners selected in the drawing will receive a special 70th anniversary T-Shirt from IMWA.

*the graphic on the prize watches might be a little different than shown here

And a couple of lucky Rally Riders will get a special prize – an IMZ  70th Anniversary Watch

We’ll send out an email to everyone who gets pulled in the drawing, and then the nice folks at IMWA will be sending our your prizes via snail mail.

But what do the high points finishers, high KM finishers, high pieces of pie finishers get?

Glory.

See you on the road.

Kevo

View ural National Rally Day in a full screen map

Pick  a Route

I use Google Maps – but any kind of mapping program will work. I pick four or five places  I’m going to hit – old bridges, roads I want to ride, places for lunch etc. I drop them into the Get Directions page on Google Maps – and it builds a route. If you need some inspiration on where to ride, check out the links in the Ride Research section on the right. The roads they pick are the ones that will get you there the quickest – so I zoom in and click on the route line, and drag it over to roads that look more interesting. You have to zoom way in to get the smaller roads.

Here’s the map I laid out for my ride yesterday.

Practice Rally Ride Map

These are the places I targeted for my practice ride

• Camp Swift- Gate Guard Bonus
• Park Road 1-C – Lonely Road Bonus
• Rockne, TX  – Historic Site Bonus
• R&G BBQ  – RTE BBQ Bonus
• Moore’s Crossing Bridge – Bridge Bonus

It was about 200km (you can set Google to show in either miles of KM which is handy), and seemed reasonable. I figured I’d do a Pre-Ride check bonus, and Carb-draining bonus – and start off with 100 quick points – and probably get north  of 500 for the day with the mileage bonus.

So the next thing was to get my Rally stuff ready.

My Rally Packet

I printed my rally packet stuff – log sheet, rally flag, and bonus list. I used my PDF viewer to add my Rally number to my rally flag before I printed it – but you can just as easily scribble it in with a marker.

My Rally clipboard.

I just keep everything on a cheap clipboard. Use a rubber band (off my morning newspaper) on the bottom to keep the sheets from flapping in the wind. I also tie a string on my pencil to keep it from disappearing on me. The string does double duty to make a loop to hang the clipboard with my rally flag for bonuses where I need a photo.

Camera with a long string

I also use a lanyard make from a long piece of parachute cord to make a neck cord for my camera. That way I can keep it in my shirt pocket (inside my jacket) – and not have to fumble around for it when I’m trying to get a bonus. The manila envelope on the back of the clipboard is for receipts and stuff for rallies where you have to keep documentation.

Rally clipboard ready to go.

And then I just stick it down next to the car seat – and it’s handy whenever I stop.

The main thing for me is to keep it pretty simple – and make sure I can find the stuff I need when I need it.

Now time to Go Ride!

Kevo

It’s going to be a hundred by noon today – so I’m starting early, and first thing is to get a couple of wrenching bonuses on the sheet so I get a quick bonus hit.

Draining the carbs

First I drain my carbs – I’m using the string my pencil is on to make a loop to hang my clipboard with my rally flag on the bars.

Airing the tires and checking the lights

Then I did the pre ride check – forgot my rally flag in this photo – dang it.

So then on the road. As I was riding out towards Camp Swift I remembered an old bridge on Manor Road – what the heck – that’s 50 points for a bridge bonus – I’ll pick that up.

1925 Pony Truss bridge on Old Manor Road

This is an old one lane bridge – they ran a new bridge next to it and left the old one in place – which is nice. It’s a little Pony Truss bridge.

Almost Lost

I missed my turn onto Monkey Road – but ended up on a road called Old Sawyer Road – which was a nice dirt road that ran out through a couple of cattle ranches – what the heck – getting lost is part of the fun – and dirt roads are worth 3 point/km – so I kept going.

Old Sawyer Road

This was a nice road – almost 10km of gravel and dirt – not too much washboard – but I did stop and check the nut on my spare a couple of times.

Even some wildflowers

There even were some wildflowers out – which is rare right now in Texas.

American Legion Post 533

So Old Sawyer Road took a big loop out to the west and missed Camp Swift completely. But as I went to pull into Bastrop State Park I spotted this M115 right across the street in front of an American Legion post – so I got the Gate Guard bonus I thought I’d missed.

My Rally Log

It was just 9:00am and I was getting a few things marked down on my Rally Log.

Park Road 1-C

All the signs were good for Park Road 1-C – Lonely Road Bonus.

Nice Saturday Morning Road

It was a nice ride, 17km, so 34 bonus points in the bag there.

I had some UDF in Smithville filling up with gas, and then cut around to another little road I wanted to pick up – Lower Red Rock Road – looked good on the map.

I still don't know what road this is.

Another wrong (or maybe right) turn and I was on 18km of dirt and gravel – 36 unexpected bonus points.  When I hit pavement I only had to ride about a mile to find a road sign and then a couple of minutes with the map and figured out how to get to my next stop – Rockne.

Rickne - Hilbig Park

Nice little historical park -this is the cabin of the founder of Rockne – Roger Lehman.  The community was called Lehmanville until the early 30′s – when the locals voted to rename the town Rockne after Notre Dame Football coach Knute Rockne. So the culture of celebrity isn’t as recent as I thought. And 25 points for a historical site.

R&G BBQ in McMahan

Then I shot down FM20/86 to McMahan for BBQ at R&G BBQ. I’d heard about this place – run by a guy who used to work at Luling City Market – but never made it down. I need an RTE bonus – so what the heck.

R&G BBQ Brisket and Sausage

And it was definitely a 50 point plate. The brisket was smoky tender, moist. The sausage was beef – natural casing – amazing. Really really good brisket develops something called a sugar cookie where the fat renders into a smoky layer of just creamy sweetness – good sugar cookie on these slices.

It was already over a hundred. So I decided not to ride into Lockhart – my original plan – and just ride back towards home (about 60 miles away now).

Moore's Crossing Bridge

But there was Moore’s Crossing Bridge – In 1884 this was the Congress Avenue Bridge in downtown Austin – the main bridge across the Colorado River. But one of the three spans of the bridge was destroyed in a 1915 flood – so they took down the remaining 2 spans and moved them here – on Onion Creek about twenty miles from the original bridge. It was in service until 1997 – and it wasn’t far off my route home – so I picked us these last 50 points on the way.

FInal Practice Rally Route

So this was my final Practice Rally Route. And the numbers are:

That’s 13 bonuses in about a 7 hour ride, for a total of 725 points.

I took the GPS to track my running time, etc – and it looked like this:

• 191 KM
• 5:03 moving time
• 2:08 stopped time
• 32.5 mph moving average
• 22.8 mph overall average

That seems in line with what I expected. This was a seven hour ride – and I expect to make about 33 mph average on the roads I ride on this kind of ride. Your mileage may vary – but I think just about anyone could easily do 500 points on this rally in a four or five hour ride. Someone who wants to crank it up could do the same easily by pounding down the kms.

It was a great – day – I’m anxious to see what other folks do on Rally Day.

Go Ride

Kevo