2007 Cape Fear 1000 - Rally Report

[RocketCowboy]

The Cape Fear 1000 (http://www.capefear1000.com) is a 26 hour endurance riding event benefiting the Victory Junction Gang (http://www.victoryjunction.org/), an organization dedicated to serving chronically-ill children between the ages of 7 and 15.

As a 26 hour event, the Cape Fear is like most long distance rallies in that it is similar to what I call a scavenger hunt on steroids. The unique difference with the Cape Fear is that riders can elect to start from one of 4 different starting points, with everyone finishing in Wilmington, NC. This years starting locations were: Salamanca NY, Cairo IL, Hattiesburg MS, and Sarasota FL. I elected to start from Hattiesburg, although I had given Cairo serious consideration as well.

This year's event took place from April 20-22nd. I took an extra day off work to get out to the starting location and rest before stopping. In keeping with the scavenger hunt idea, the list of possible bonus locations was given to all riders the previous Wednesday night at 6pm EST ... roughly 36 hours before the start of the ride. From that list, those of us starting in Hattiesburg had roughly 83 potential bonus locations to select from, each with differing point and difficulty levels. But before I get too far into that, I'll break the rally report down into a day by day thought process for some linearity in the flow of events.

Pre-ride - Wednesday, April 18th
Ride Planning

With the bike loaded up and ready to go, the only thing left to do was wait for the rally packs to be sent out and start planning my route. The rally packs were due out Wednesday at 6:00pm EST. Each of the starting points had a unique rally pack. Unbeknown to us, the first part of the rally pack would be unique to the starting point, while the back half was consistent for all participants. The back half could not be started until after 7AM Saturday, so when combined with the rest stop, the ride was neatly broken out into two segments. I'll cover the segment specifics below, but the route was basically looking like an easy ride from Hattiesburg MS over to Macon GA for the first day, then from Macon GA on to Wilmington NC.

The nice thing with this rally book ... the bonus locations were all detailed with GPS coordinates. While not being the format that Microsoft Streets and Trips uses, a quick Google search turned up a conversion tool and I was off to cuttin' and pastin' to get the bonus info from the rally book and into S&T. With the route planned out and loaded up into the GPS, it was time to hit the sack and rest up before heading out for Hattiesburg.

Day 1 - Thursday, April 19th
Ride to Hattiesburg

Seems like plans never quite always go according to plan, and knowing that Thursday was going to be an easy day's ride, I wasn't very motivated to get up and on the road by 5am. No worries, I was still up and out on the driveway for a picture by 7:00am. As has become customary for my longer trips, I usually start off with a picture of the bike in front of the garage, all loaded up and ready to go.

http://www.rocketcowboy.net/users/rc/Pictures/rallies/2007_CF1K/images/DSC03046.jpg

The downside to leaving at 7AM was obviously the traffic. Now I remember why I wanted to get out of Dallas at 5AM. Rather than fight with rush hour traffic, I decided to head north up to McKinney, then east towards Lake Lavon. Once I was away from the majority of the metromess, I pulled up my route to Hattiesburg on the GPS, and let it work my way back to I-20. After alot of back road navigating, some of those roads being fairly nice, I was on I-20 and droaning along towards Mississippi. I made the Louisiana border right around 11:00am, stopping for gas and lunch just across the border.

http://www.rocketcowboy.net/users/rc/Pictures/rallies/2007_CF1K/images/DSC03048.jpg

Riding through Louisiana, the wildflowers were definitely in bloom. It seems like I've ridden this stretch of I-20 every year in April since about 2004; first on the Busa doing my first ever Iron Butt ride (SS1K), then on the ST1300 heading out to Florida for coast-to-coast ride (50CC), and now to start the Cape Fear 1000. As much as I enjoy the Bluebonnets in Texas, it's intriguing to me to watch the color fade from blue to maroon as you cross East Texas and into Louisiana. I made a couple attempts to capture the colors on camera, but most didn't pick up the overall size of the flower clusters. Of the pictures I took Thursday, this one was the best:

http://www.rocketcowboy.net/users/rc/Pictures/rallies/2007_CF1K/images/DSC03049.jpg

Having made the trip across Louisiana, I was riding up on my favorite stop that I've done every time I make this trek across I-20 - the Mississippi River! For whatever reason, I'm fascinated with bridges, and both of the big bridges across the Mississippi (Memphis and Vicksburg) are favorites of mine. This time, in addition to my usual photo stop, I was also able to grab a shot of the bridge from the Louisiana side just before crossing...

http://www.rocketcowboy.net/users/rc/Pictures/rallies/2007_CF1K/images/DSC03057.jpg

... and of course my staple photo of the bike with the bridge and the river in the background.

http://www.rocketcowboy.net/users/rc/Pictures/rallies/2007_CF1K/images/DSC03058.jpg

Changing things up a little, and since I finally picked up a small portable tripod for the camera, I finally broke down and snapped a picture of myself along with the bike. It doesn't happen often, but here's me with the bike, out on a road trip.

http://www.rocketcowboy.net/users/rc/Pictures/rallies/2007_CF1K/images/DSC03060.jpg

My other stock photo from this site, there's a river boat casino down beneath the visitors pull out.

http://www.rocketcowboy.net/users/rc/Pictures/rallies/2007_CF1K/images/DSC03063.jpg

Welcome to Mississippi!

http://www.rocketcowboy.net/users/rc/Pictures/rallies/2007_CF1K/images/DSC03064.jpg

Making the ride across Mississippi, the nice scenery change is the trees. East Texas has trees, but not like these. The scenery changes are part of why I enjoy riding cross country. Even when done from the interstate, there's lots to see and take in.

http://www.rocketcowboy.net/users/rc/Pictures/rallies/2007_CF1K/images/DSC03066.jpg

I would make my second gas stop not far from where this picture was taken. The gas attendant would be amazed that I managed to pump $18 worth of gas into the RT. She was even more shocked to learn that I had started the day in Dallas.

While making the run down I-59 into Hattiesburg from Meridian, I decided to play with photos of my shadow. I would take a few more during the course of the weekend. I didn't do a good job getting my arm out of the picture, but you can see how dirty that hi-viz jacket gets after a few trips through the rain.

http://www.rocketcowboy.net/users/rc/Pictures/rallies/2007_CF1K/images/DSC03067.jpg

Once getting into Hattiesburg, the fun would start. While unloading the bike into my hotel room, a bone-head move on my part left my tank bag open while pulling it off the bike, and my $30 Polaroid came went crashing to the curb. This camera was to be my lifeline to a good rally finish, as several of the bonus stops required pictures as proof that I had visited the location. Overall, the camera appeared to be in pretty good shape, some scratches here or there and some problems closing the camera down. The first test picture I took after the drop was ruined, but the second test picture turned out ok. What I noticed was that viewfinder was not folding into it's storage position, and once I got that resolved, the camera was not latching shut as it should. After the two test photos, the camera's print count jumped from 5 up to 10, so it wasn't giving me an accurate count on the number of prints remaining.

To make things worse, I had ordered a spare camera from Amazon.com a couple weeks early, but didn't get the shipping notification until Wednesday. I didn't have it with me, and now there was a chance my one camera was going to bite the dust out before I even started the rally. A quick run to CVS and I was able to pick up a replacement camera to carry as a spare, but my original camera wouldn't let me down during the rest of the rally.

[RocketCowboy]

Day 2 - Friday, April 20th
Start - Hattiesburg MS to Macon GA

With the rally scheduled to start at 1PM EDT, and me being positioned in Hattiesburg already, there wasn't much of a sense of urgency starting the day. One thing I had to keep reminding myself was that rally time was EST, and so for the first bit of this ride I would have to remember to do the math and convert local CDT to EDT. To make things easier, I set the clock on the bike as well as both GPS units to EDT. This would help me later in the day, particularly as I got closer to the time change.

With the bike loaded up, I checked out of the hotel, and headed down the road to an IHOP to wait it out until the start of the rally. The restaurant was busy, with a lot of families there having a late breakfast with family members getting ready to deploy overseas. The crowd was starting to die down, so there were no worries about me camping out at a table for a couple hours. I usually "detox" off of caffine before any long ride, but it's also become somewhat of a tradition to have a couple cups of coffee before getting started ... at least that's been going on since I did the coast-to-coast (50cc) from Florida in 2005. This time, I think I was on the edge of having too much coffee, as my nerves would start to get bad. Reviewing the route I had plotted out, I would get calmed back down, then would have another cup of coffee and be all wound up again. I was looking forward to the clock hitting noon, so I could get out of planning mode and finally just start riding.

As 11:40am approached, I paid out at the IHOP, hit an ATM for some cash in case I had any problems with credit cards along the way (they don't always like alot of gas station hits in different states on a given day), and took up camp at a Shell gas station just off the highway that would be my run out of town. Since we had starters from so many different places, the protocol was to get a time/date receipt between 12:50pm and 1:10pm CDT, then call rally HQ to declare your start. I wanted to make sure I didn't have to burn multiple receipts, so walked into the gas station to buy a bottle of water for my camelbak. The receipt was stamped 11:57am CDT, so I was good to go. Back at the bike, I started to fuel up, and while that was running I made my call into rally HQ to officially start. There was another multi-stop bonus allowing 150 points for a gas receipt per state (1 per state), with a max of 600 points. This fuel-up would be my MS gas receipt. Rally officially started, and my first 150 points bagged, I grabbed a picture of the bike and hit the road.

http://www.rocketcowboy.net/users/rc/Pictures/rallies/2007_CF1K/images/DSC03068.jpg

First stop, Hot Coffee MS. Worth 1000 points, the J&H Harper Store in Hot Coffee has been a bonus location for a few different rallies. This stop would be one of only three picture stops for the day ... the rest being receipt stops. I rode up on another Hattiesburg starter who was just wrapping up his photo stop and taking off as I pulled up. He would be the last rider I would see that day.

http://www.rocketcowboy.net/users/rc/Pictures/rallies/2007_CF1K/images/DSC03069.jpg

From Hot Coffee, my next stop would be Meridian MS for a receipt worth 600 points. Not much, but Meridian was directly along the way to Macon MS for a combo bonus ... Macon MS and Macon GA, so it was worth the effort. I had learned that one along the Texas Two Step. On my way to Meridian, there were more of the flowers along the median ... this time more of a combination of maroons and blues.

http://www.rocketcowboy.net/users/rc/Pictures/rallies/2007_CF1K/images/DSC03071.jpg

Now, my Meridian MS stop started to make me nervous. My plan was to ride up to Meridian, find a QuickMart of convenience store to pick up some beef jerky for the ride, snag my receipt and be on my way. Just after riding into Meridian, I see a cluster of gas stations and fast food restaurants off to the left ... that'll do! I peal off I-20 and dive into the closest gas station, grab my selections, and head to the counter. All paid up, I ask for a receipt then dash out the door. As I get back to the bike, I find that the receipt is useless ... not only does it not have the city printed on it, it's missing date and time, name of the place, there's nothing useful about it. I briefly glance towards the gas pumps, but decide to try my luck across the street ... Burger King has always had good receipts from my experience.

I make jog across the street and into Burger King. By now it's well after lunch rush, but I still have to wait for what seems to be a painfully long amount of time for a simple $.99 cheeseburger. The price you pay to "have it your way". Alas, the Burger King receipt is junk as well ... it listed everything BUT the city, so I guess that's one thing I can't get my way.

My end result was to run back across the street to the original gas station, pump in the less than 2 gallons of fuel I had consumed on my run from Hattiesburg up to Meridian, and get a pay at the pump receipt. Finally ... those 600 points were mine!

Now for some reason, Ms. Garmin decided I needed to go east to Alabama in order to head northwest to Macon MS. I'm not convinced that was really the fastest route to get up there, but I did as I was told. Since I'm on the clock now, there was no stopping for the "bike in front of the state sign" picture that I had been doing the previous day. Instead, today I would just snag those pictures from the bike as I was crossing state lines. Hey ... the bike is still in there, right?

http://www.rocketcowboy.net/users/rc/Pictures/rallies/2007_CF1K/images/DSC03073.jpg

Macon MS would start to be a repeat of Meridian. I thought I would be smart and this time dive in for a beverage refill, because there was absolutely no point in wasting a receipt on gas. Again, I was thwarted. This time, my options were more limited, as Macon MS is NOT a very big town at all. With the cashier receipt being wasted, I pulled around to the pumps and did the "pay at the pump" (PATP) routine. This receipt was also good, so now I had the 1000 points for Macon MS in the bag, and the first part of the two-part Macon MS/GA bonus in the bag.

Next on the list, Birmingham AL.

Getting back to that route up to Macon MS, I'm pretty well convinced that it was a sub-optimal route when route FROM Macon to Birmingham followed some of the same roads. A quick run back east into Alabama, then snaking my way southeast to meet up with I-20 again. It was on my way back to I-20 that I had my one close encounter ... a gentleman in a pickup truck who obviously doesn't like motorcycles at all. After being trapped behind him for several miles, I waited until I had a good passing zone to make my move around him. It was as I came up on his driverside door that he decided HE needed to move left, and he tried to come into the oncoming lane with me. Quick blip of the throttle and I had him safely behind me, and I wouldn't see him again.

The Birmingham AL bonus was another photo bonus. For all the years I've traveled to Birmingham while I lived in Memphis, I knew they had a few replica statues around town. The particular replica I was after this time was a replica of the Statue of Liberty, set up right in front of the Boy Scouts of America campus. Interestingly enough, this would be located only a few exits north of were my Birmingham office was located. I never noticed it before because I was always coming up to the office from the south ... from the airport.

Now, if rush hour traffic hadn't been so bad, I could have pulled to the side of the road and snapped the required picture. As it was, I didn't feel that was safe, so I took the exit and weaved my way up the hill to the BSA parking lot to take my picture from there. Birmingham was worth 850 points.

http://www.rocketcowboy.net/users/rc/Pictures/rallies/2007_CF1K/images/DSC03074.jpg

With Birmingham claimed, I had one more photo bonus to snag for the day. As I headed east out of Birmingham, it was becoming evident that I wouldn't make it there during daylight, so I was going to have to fashion some way to light up my picture. The destination, Horseshoe Bend National Military Park near New Site AL. Along the way to New Site, I would make a needed stop for fuel, and with that good receipt I would pick up 150 points for my Alabama fuel stop.

After the fuel stop, the roads to the park would start gradually getting smaller ... off the US highway for a state highway, then down to a park road to ride through the park. As I pulled into the park, I had a single deer sighting which got me to keep the speeds down in case there were more in hiding, with a desire to get to the other side of the road right in front of me. This was the one area where I was wishing for extra lighting on the RT, but so far that's the one thing I had on my previous bike that I've not worked out for the RT. Otherwise the RT's stock headlight configuration performed admirably.

As I pulled into the park, the roadside was not suitable for parking the RT in such a manor as to use it to light up the entrance sign. Fortunately, the flash on both cameras worked well enough to capture the picture. With my rally flag hanging on the entrance sign, my photo netted me another 1000 points for New Site.

http://www.rocketcowboy.net/users/rc/Pictures/rallies/2007_CF1K/images/DSC03075.jpg

With New Site out of the way, it was time to head to Macon GA. Macon was were I had planned to take the rest bonus, good for 7500 points, as well as grab a receipt for the city in order to claim the city, and complete the combo bonus. The ride down to Macon would take me down all secondary roads, and I was amazed at the police presence on these remote 2-lane roads on a Friday night. No problem with any of the officers, I continued to make my way towards Macon. I arrived into Macon just minutes after midnight ... about an hour ahead of schedule.

[RocketCowboy]

Day 3 - Saturday, April 21st
Finish - Macon GA to Wilmington NC

Pulling into Macon GA, I would make my first significant mistake of the rally. First, there had been a rule stating that receipts could not be used more than once, so for each separate bonus claimed, they needed to have unique receipts. This had me looking for four receipts coming out of Macon; one to claim the city bonus, two to claim the sleep stop, and the fourth to claim the GA gas stop. With the sleep stop needing two receipts covering the four hour sleep window, I decided to find a hotel with a vacancy first, then with my room secured, I'd head to a nearby gas station for a receipt. That part of my plan worked out. Starting receipts secured, I headed to the room for a couple hours sleep. While the rest stop was 4 hours, I wanted to keep it right on 4 hours so that I could carry over my 1 hour advantage into the second leg. This was not to be the case.

Even though I had tested the in-room alarm clock before going to bed, at 3:00am when it went off, it was not audible ... instead playing just slight white noise. Had there not been some noise from the parking lot, I might not have awoke when I did. As it was, it was 4:20am when I finally awoke. I got things loaded up on the bike, went back to that gas station for another receipt to restart the clock, then back to the hotel to check out and grab the hotel receipt.

This is where problem two arose. The first problem was that the hotel's clock was an hour off, so instead of it showing me being at the hotel from midnight to 4:30am, it was instead showing that I was there from 11:00pm until 3:30am. The sleep duration was fine, but the start time was before midnight which was not allowed for the sleep bonus. A simple call from the scoring table would confirm that the clock at the hotel was off, but I should have accounted for that before I got to the scoring table. Second, because the hotel receipt enveloped the times on both gas receipts, they couldn't technically count in the way that I had worked it out in my head. Points can not be accrued during the sleep stop, so that would void out both gas receipts. The resolution to this problem was to use the first gas receipt to document the start of my sleep break, and the hotel receipt would document the end of the sleep break. The last gas receipt would be used to claim the Macon GA bonus, and complete the Macon combo bonus. Ultimately, I missed the 150 gas bonus for Georgia, as there wouldn't be another gas stop while I was in the state. Still, 7500 points for the rest break, 1290 points for Macon GA, and then an extra 1000 points for hitting both Macon MS and Macon GA ... it was a plentiful stop.

From Macon, I would head east to Eatonton GA to visit the Uncle Remus Museum. Just as they predicted in the rally book, the museum was closed when I got there, but since it was a photo bonus anyway, it was easy to snag the 1150 points for this stop. Just a picture of the Brer Rabbit, and I was back on my way.

http://www.rocketcowboy.net/users/rc/Pictures/rallies/2007_CF1K/images/DSC03076.jpg

With Eatonton in the bag, I was now off to hit the post-7AM bonus stops. The first of the day would be in Augusta GA. The majority of the bonus stops from here out would be photo receipts, with the exception of the on-going state gas receipts.

The trip out to Augusta would put me back up on the interstate for a spell, but would get me into Augusta just after 7:00am Saturday morning. The Augusta bonus was to stop at Sconyer's BBQ, and get a picture of the building. Unlike most stops, where you want to get a picture of the sign in the background, there was no visible sign on the building. Since the bonus listing called for the building, I grabbed that picture then headed out. As I was pulling out, another rider pulled in on his ST1300. I didn't recognize the rider, but would see that bike back in Wilmington. The Augusta picture would net me 2450 points.

http://www.rocketcowboy.net/users/rc/Pictures/rallies/2007_CF1K/images/DSC03077.jpg

From Augusta GA, my route took me to Ninety Six SC, home of the Ninety Six National Historic Site from the Revolutionary War era. I got there early enough in the morning that there was a good bit of dew on the sign ... I couldn't get my duct tape to stick to the sign. Plan B ... I had the bushes in front of the sign hold my flag in place, while I snapped the picture. Ninety Six would net me 2320 points.

http://www.rocketcowboy.net/users/rc/Pictures/rallies/2007_CF1K/images/DSC03078.jpg

From Ninety Six SC, I was headed towards Hopkins SC and the Congaree National Park. Just after pulling out of Ninety Six, I would need to stop for gas. That would get me another 150 points and the South Carolina gas receipt.

The trip down to Hopkins was a nice mix of interstate and 2-lane back roads. The RT was performing marvelously, getting up to 50mpg on that stretch of back road. I was starting to get concerned about the finish deadline, but still had another stop to go before shortcutting back to the finish. With all the stops documented on the GPS, it was easy for me to be able to reroute on the fly, and add stops if time allowed.

Back to Hopkins ... the ride to the park entrance was a gorgeous 2-lane black top, through some older neighborhoods with people out mowing yards, road shaded by the tree canopy, and almost no other traffic at all. The Congaree entrance sign was easy to spot on the right, and easily captured for 1680 points.

http://www.rocketcowboy.net/users/rc/Pictures/rallies/2007_CF1K/images/DSC03080.jpg

With the Congaree sign in the bag, it was time to back track back to the interstate, then head down to Camden SC. Camden is another Revolutionary War site, and the oldest existing inland town in the state of South Carolina. The target for this bonus was the Kershaw-Cornwallis House for 1490 points.

There would be some kind of festival around the war site that would add a little confusion to the gathering. Fortunately there was a site map that showed exactly where the house was located. A quick jump back on the main road, and ran around to what I think was the northeast corner of the site. The house was visible from the street, but there was also a sand trail that led up to the house. Tire tracks indicated that someone had driven up there recently, so I figured it was fine for me to do the same. The RT actually handled pretty well in the light sand. She was getting a good work out in a couple different off-road environments this weekend.

http://www.rocketcowboy.net/users/rc/Pictures/rallies/2007_CF1K/images/DSC03081.jpg

With Camden done, I would try to start adding in some extra stops while still making it back to the finish on time. Unfortunately, this was my second significant mistake. The way I was doing my routing, I had the impression that Camden was my last scheduled stop. Darlington was right off the interstate, with maybe a 15 mile jaunt up North to the race track and back. Darlington would net me 1160 points. The way the bonus description was written, I didn't think I had the right sign in my picture, so I snapped the Polaroid just in case but didn't grab a digital photo. It would turn out that I DID get the correct sign, but several others had been confused by the bonus description as well.

With Darlington done, I decided to high tail it home to the finish line. What I didn't realize, was that I had originally planned to stop in Dillon SC for a 820 point bonus. This bonus was located right off the side of I-95 at the North Carolina/South Carolina border. I would see the bonus from the road ... heck, I would stop and look at it on the way home, but didn't realize it was on my original planned route. I rode right past it.

After Dillon, I would also right right past Lumberton NC for 690 points. That stop was only ~4 blocks away from the highway. There would be other stops close by, but these two were originally on my ride plan, and were so close it was crazy to miss them.

There was still one bonus I intended to grab, by time was going to be tight. As a miscellaneous bonus, there was 1000 points being offered to riders who showed up at the finish line with a COLD 6 pack of their favorite drink. I only had time for one more stop, and gas was getting precious. I wanted to push as close to Wilmington as possible before stopping, but as I got to about 24 miles out of Wilmington I had been on reserve too long for comfort, so I pulled up the closest gas stop and made the mad dash. As luck would turn out, that would be probably the one gas station in all of southern North Carolina that didn't sell alcohol. Now, had I been smart, I would have read that no where in the bonus pack did it say the drinks needed to be alcoholic, but that was something to lament later. Back on the road from my gas stop, and my 4th 150 points state gas bonus.

I crossed the finish line with 2 minutes to spare before penalties started. I had 1156 miles on the odometer.

Other miscellaneous bonuses that I would claim included the 1000 point riders log, 1000 point 1000 mile bonus, 300 point Mardis Gras beads bonus, and the 500 point Cape Fear 1000 rally sticker bonus. My total points for the rally ... 27890, good for 29th out of 82 starters. Considering I missed 2510 points off my plan, I could have finished 17th if I had claimed what I intended. All said and done though, my goal setting out in my first rally in 2 years was to finish, to not DNF, and to not be time-barred. I made some decisions on the road, and ultimately made it back in the required time period.

[RebeccaV]

RC, it is such a pleasure to have you in the BMW community and on this forum. WELCOME!!!

Great report and pictures - thanks for taking us along. Congrats on your finish in the Cape Fear.

Rebecca

[RocketCowboy]

Thanks for the welcome Rebecca!

[Rob Nye]

That was a great trip report RC, thank for sharing.

The Cape Fear was a great time. Perhaps next time I will start from somewhere warmer...

For those following along if you want to participate in a similar event in June check out the Minuteman 1000 at www.minuteman1000.com

Best,

Rob Nye

[RocketCowboy]

Thanks Rob. Sorry we didn't get to meet in person at the banquet.

[john1691]

Great report and photos. Nice looking bike, as well. Distance rally riding is something I haven't done yet. You make it look easy, but I'll keep in mind that a lot of planning goes into every ride. For now I'll stick with 350-400 mile days that end up in a comfy hotel with a steak dinner!

Thanks again!

[SheRidesABeemer]

What great detail and insights, thanks for putting it all together. Nice way to start my morning. :thumb