“I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.”
-- Susan Sontag

Up and at ‘em, the alarm blasting Duck Tales, and I blearily head down to the hotel’s ballroom to collect the packet for Leg 3. The rider meeting was surprisingly brief, lasting maybe 10 minutes in all; by this point, even the rookies know what we’re doing, and there was nothing but business to attend to, some details on procedure for the finish.

This leg would be 5 days long, with 2 call-ins and 2 rest bonuses.. and a ton of points! I’d fallen to 66th place in the standings, and I knew it was going to be an uphill climb just to hold on to that position. I wanted a “rookie ride” and I sure had done one. If I’d gone to Santa Monica like I knew I should’ve I would been in the top 30, but there’s only 3 things to say about that:

• Shoulda
• Woulda
• Coulda

I sat for a bit eating breakfast and trying to soak up the scene, feeling more connected to and part of the IBA community than ever before. I wanted to hold on to this feeling of belonging. The way people just came together to help me.. it was just overwhelming. I didn’t want a moment of this to pass by unnoticed.

As I was chatting with people and making my (by now) usual excuses about my “poor” showing so far, I resolved that I was going to continue my plan - ride reasonably chill (IE still no heroics) but to find a route that was both challenging AND went someplace I wanted to go; if I was going to sniff flowers, then by god I was going to sniff the flowers I WANTED to sniff! Besides, I only needed 80,000 points to be a finisher, I was sitting at 48,810 already, and the call-ins and rest bonuses would score me a little over 9,000 points.. so I really only needed like 22,000 and change to be a finisher.

I retreated to my room by 5am, and took stock.

Flipping through the packet, I was disappointed to see there were only 2 bonus combos, and no additional combos or points for the Gut Bomb Bingo. I had totally fallen for a red herring! All that work (and more importantly, TIME!) to score these restaurants had been a waste. Still, I was committed now. I knew that Burgerville is a Pacific Northwest chain and that Schoop’s is in Chicago, and with the others were scattered around the country, I might be able to squeeze still more points out of this, salvage some kind of moral victory here.

The rally packet only had a pair of combo bonuses, neither of which appealed to me; after several days in the hot southern tier, I was ready for some cooler weather across the north. Taking a look at the spread of bonuses, a loop up through the PNW, then head back east to cross into Canada at Detroit for a Tim Horton’s, swinging back around south and east into New York for a Friendly’s made sense. I threw together a route that would clear the PNW in 2 days, and mapped 2 alternative plans for the remainder of the leg; I would do route planning along the way, depending on how I was feeling.

I set up my route in the GPS, transcribed the plan to my cloud-backed notes, and loaded up the bike. I grabbed a handful of dates from a spread that Wendy’s daughter had thoughtfully provided, and had the bike loaded in short order, pulling out of the hotel at 7:20am. For once, I was getting out ahead of most of the pack, maybe 2/3rds of the bikes quietly waiting for their riders to finish their own plans and machinations.

47) COKE - Kuner Feedlot - Kersey, CO - 535 pts

10:27 EDT

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This segment:	73 miles, 1h07m
Total:	73 miles, 1h07m
Time Remaining:	120h33m
Points scored:	49,345

While taking care of the paperwork for this bonus, I noticed that someone had decorated my machine…

Now I was facing a classic multi-day rally ride - 7.5-8 hours and nearly 500 miles until my next bonus. I’ve ridden I-80 across southern Wyoming so many times, including on my very first mutli-day trip so many years ago.. so I knew what to expect. It used to be one of my least favorite sections of slab, but I’ve come to appreciate the rolling prairies, the hardened mud formations of the Great Divide Basin and the Red Desert, the odd-ball gas station town of Little America, and remnants of the Lincoln Highway stretching across needle grass and antelope-strewn horizon.

First though, I had to crawl north out of Colorado, opting for the fast and direct US-85 to Cheyenne, picking up I-80 west as I passed by the Red Lion Hotel where LDX started in 2022. A creature of habit, as long as a place is reasonably acceptable, I’ll return, and I’ve ended up staying at that place over and over again, despite it being… not the best hotel in the world. Still, it’s cheap and they don’t hassle me about parking my bike under the portico.

I-80 can be a slog, and there’s big long sections that expose you to the regular north/south winds in the area, tossing your bike around. I’ve seen 18-wheelers tip up off their wheels, I’ve had to shelter from flash floods, snow in August… but today the winds were calm, the sky was blue, and the temps hovered in the mid-to-high-80s all day. A calm, quiet ride… until I saw the Mongols.

Look.. I don’t want any trouble. I’m just trying to get to Salt Lake City and my next bonus.. but the Mongols, riding ahead of me in a pack of 50 or 60 bikes, weren’t making my day any easier.

Parked in the left lane, they were going just under the speed limit when I came up behind them. As soon as I realized who they were, I stayed back a respectful distance, but that didn’t stop 2 of them from dropping back to see what I was about. I gave them my best goofy-ass smile and derpy wave, mentally crossing my fingers that they’d see my pink helmet and rainbow array of cartoon stickers and leave me alone.. which they did, but not before gesturing at me to stay well back from their pack. No argument from me! Besides, I wanted in no way to be near or identified with them, given their road behavior, sending prospects cutting between cars, screaming up the breakdown lane on the right to brake-check tractor trailers.. they were a danger to themselves and others, and I felt an urge to grimace and shrug at every car I pass. “Sorry! I’m not with them! #NotAllRiders!” I mentally screamed at them, but I think they mostly ignored me - most of them were on their phones.

Annoying and dangerous - not the best combination, but I patiently trailed behind these FINE LAW-ABIDING GENTLEMEN, because I knew their true weakness - those dinky little fuel tanks on their chopped up custom bikes! Holding maybe 3 gallons, they’d need to get off the highway together, like college girls unable to use a bathroom except in a roving pack. Sure enough, they zoomed off at the next town, I was able to get back up to cruising speed and chew through some miles.

There must have been some kind of big meeting or confab they were heading to, as I’d see a few more packs of these guys over the course of the day, usually at rest areas, weigh stations, or at gas stations just off the highway. I did see 2 packs of them pulled over on the side of the highway, each accompanied by at least a dozen Wyoming state troopers; I suspect the car drivers on their phones had given them a heads up. Scary, dangerous shit, and the less involved I was, the better. I was glad to leave them behind.

The day passed uneventfully otherwise. I stopped in Little America for a quick bathroom break and to refill my water jug; I’d neglected to top it off when leaving the checkpoint, and had run dry about 45 minutes earlier. I crossed into Utah, slotting down through Echo Canyon, but instead of turning right to pick up I-84 to head towards the Pacific Northwest, I stayed on I-80, bearing left and south around Echo Reservoir, past Alta into the southern end of SLC, before making my way north on surface streets to my next bonus.

48) UTSL - Crown Burgers - Salt Lake City, UT - 1,153 pts

18:00 EDT

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This segment:	493 miles, 7h33m
Total:	566 miles, 8h00m
Time Remaining:	113h00m
Points scored:	50,498

I bid my adieus and left Cory and Annette to catch up. Snaking through Salt Lake City traffic, I picked up I-15 north, soon climbing out of the SLC metro bowl, bearing west on I-84 towards Idaho, my next bonus being in Boise. The weather was heating up, and I stopped at the Lake Bonneville rest area, 2 miles past the Idaho border. Knowing the risk of high winds and storms across the Snake River Plain of southern Idaho, I kept an eye on my weather apps; the National Weather Service was posting increasingly dire notices about the threat of severe thunderstorms, and I-84 offers no cover at all, just a long, boring highway zipping across a high, flat plain, broken only by the occasional lump of basalt poking out of the thin soil and scrubby grasses.

I-84 heads northwest for another 30 miles or so, before joining with I-86 and running west across southern Idaho. About 30 minutes after that merge, I saw a rally bike ahead of me - aux fuel cell, loads of stickers… one of ours? Yup - Bill Karitis! Bill was another one of the other rookies in a small group chat, sharing music, rally news, and general positive vibes, as well as being part of the village that changed my tire, but I didn’t know he was heading up to the PNW, too. I was pacing a little faster than he was, so as I closed the distance and pulled even with him, I gave him the “speed it up, Karitis!” hand signal! I didn’t expect him to actually speed up but he did, falling in behind me, and then my phone rang; Bill was calling!

We chatted for a while, getting caught up on rally gossip, commiserating about the heat and the approaching weather, setting a nice pace along I-84. Rallying is such an individual, solitary sport, it was a nice change to ride with someone for a little ways, even if in theory you’re competing with each other!

Passing Twin Falls, the wind picked up, suddenly cold and swirling, a cloud of road dust and debris skittering across the pavement. The bike leaned into it, Bill and I kept heading west, cutting through tumbleweeds, past trash swirling in little mini tornadoes at every bridge pillar and embankment. I’d been keeping an eye on the weather radar, and saw some big boomer cells creeping across I-84 between us and Boise, big angry purple blotches looking mean. I decided it was a pretty good time to take a meal break, and called Bill who was still right behind me, to ask if he wanted to join me. “Besides, you’ll get to see where that lady backed over me and Jo’s motorcycles!” I promised, pulling off in Glenns Ferry, ID…. and that’s how we found ourselves at “Beck’s Railhouse”.

Beck’s is just a small bar in a small town next to the railroad tracks; hence the name. We parked and ran in out of the rain, a handful of bored 20-something locals at the bar hootin’ and hollerin’, and for neither the first nor last time on the rally, I wondered “what day of the week is it, anyways?” We got ourselves situated at a 2-top by the door, and ordered some soft drinks from the bar, as well as a pizza; apparently they’re made locally and frozen, but we didn’t care – I’d take a freezer case pizza at this point, and the luxury of a sit-down meal with a friend in the middle of all this rally nonsense was welcome.

Our pizza came out in due course, as did the sun briefly, and we took advantage of the wifi to check in with our people back home. Several of the bar patrons wandered over to strike up conversation with the weirdos in the spaceman outfits, as we were clearly the most interesting thing to happen in town this week. Bill turned on his charm to full force, taking one for the team as the answerer-of-questions and the teller-of-stories while I wolfed down slices.

While Bill played host, I took a few moments to consider my plan. After Boise, I’d originally intended to head north into the mountains to the remote town of Yellow Pine, ID for the 4,236 point bonus “World’s Best Tater Tots”, which involved 50-60 miles of unpaved National Forest Service roads. Back in Denver, Basecamp and Google were both claiming it would add 3.5-4 hours to my route. Right now, Google was refusing to route me to Yellow Pine at all, and after some internet sleuthing, the road in from the south (which I’d be taking) was marked as closed, requiring a multi-hour detour to the west to get into town from the west. Given the weather, it wouldn’t surprise me to find the road closed due to tree fall or washout; indeed, the weather radar was still angry, the storm seeming to slow to a crawl, sitting over us all the way to Boise, mad purple and red, lightning and strong wind warnings galore.

I mentioned this to Bill, who mentioned he was heading there as well, but was reconsidering. This sparked a conversation about our general plans for the PNW. Given that there was really only the decision to go clockwise or counter-clockwise around the region, and neither of us felt like we were trying to contend for a top slot this year, we decided hey, what if we ride together tomorrow? The rules say that as long as we don’t ride together more than 24 hours, we wouldn’t qualify as a team, and we already had the same plan for the region, so why not?

I stepped outside under the porch awning to stay clear of the rain, and made a call to Jeff Earls, who confirmed the rules, and thanked us for letting him know. Stepping back in, Bill’s court had grown, and he was telling stories from the road to an appreciate knot of kids. I let him know that Jeff had cleared us to be “TeamNotATeam”, and I joined in the conversation and storytelling. After an hour or so the rain had cleared, and we thought we saw a gap in the storm that we could just squeak through. We gifted our leftover pizza to the guys at the bar, and while Bill settled the tab, I went outside to get the “prelaunch sequence” started.

Outside, one of the young women from the bar was smoking with some other patrons, and as I started packing the bike, checking latches and straps, she sauntered over, a little unsteady on her feet, and with a slight slur from the half-empty beer bottle she’d left the bar with, started asking me about the bike. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Bill approaching right behind her, and I assumed it would be the usual battery of inquiries - “The Iron Butt Rally? You mean like Sturgis? A scavenger hunt? A thousand miles a day?! I don’t even like to drive that far!”” - but instead, she started… well, flirting with me. “It’s… such a big bike. Do you give rides, ever?” she mumbled, clumsily stroking the Russel Day Long saddle.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Bill snort and chortle a little to himself, and I didn’t know if I should blush or chuckle myself! Picking up a local girl at a bar in rural Idaho was NOT an approved bonus for this rally, after all, so I answered her series of increasingly suggestive questions at face value, while continuing to put on my gear, check the GPS for the next bonus, etc. Eventually I had to ask her to step back as I swung a leg over the bike, and she made sure to flutter her lashes at me. saying “stop back sometime and we can go for a ride together..”

Bill: “Seems like you dodged a bullet on that one, Kerri!”

Me: “Glad you were here to witness it.. no one would believe the things that we see out here!”

Bill: “Yeah… I certainly don’t think you could get a dated business receipt from her!”

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We rolled on, aiming straight for a gap between the storms. The wind was whipping something fierce, as we were caught in the downdraft of both storms, and we saw 2 different fire crews working on putting out bushfires along the highway, started by lightning strikes. With absolutely no shelter along this stretch, and certainly nothing higher than the top of our helmets, discretion was clearly the right choice to have made.

That self satisfaction justifying an hour or so off the bikes was short-lived, as just 40 minutes later it became clear we were not getting past this next line of storms.. in fact, we rode right into the teeth of it. As we passed through Mountain Home, ID, the heavens opened up and in the resulting deluge we had to slow to a crawl, hazard lights flashing while the wind spun sheets and waves of frigid rain across the highway. Within minutes we were both drenched, and I pulled off the last Mountain Home exit on the west edge of town to seek some shelter at a gas station that glowed a comforting amber through the storm.

Pulling up to a pump, the wind rocked the bike even while parked in the “lee” of the gas station building itself. I didn’t really need fuel, but I decided to top off the tanks while I was stopped, and that’s when I noticed that nearly every other pump was surrounded by a cluster of choppers, cruisers, and other representatives of the Harley-Davidson brand… we’d caught up with the Mongols! A glance over at the gas station, and I saw a group of a dozen of them huddled under the awning, looking utterly miserable in their sleeveless cuts and blue jeans soaked through, bears and long hair matted and dripping. Inside, I could see a crowd of another 20 or so filling up the convenience store area. If I was struggling even with my waterproof gear and heated grips, I can only imagine how miserable they were.

I glanced back at Bill at the pump behind me, and he was making a “let’s not linger” face at me. One young guy with a relatively clean back patch was on the other side of my pump, filling up multiple bikes. I don’t know what possessed me, but I just hollered out “Man… this weather huh?” and he looked at me briefly, and then looked away. I was not to be deterred; I followed up with “You guys all riding somewhere?” He looked up, peering at me between stringing locks of wet, ratty hair. “Huh?” he coughed out at me. “Well.. just seen a lot of you.. everyone getting together someplace or something?” He stared at me for a beat, with a look of disbelief, and then turned away and went back to filling bikes. I looked back at Bill, who now had a “What the hell is wrong with you, girl?” look, and I imagine he was trying to decide if it would be better to call 911 for me now, or wait until he got a safe distance away from the scene!

I walked over and laughed an apology, and we huddled to make a plan. The radar was just looking like crap for the next couple hours, and it being almost 10pm local time, we decided to grab a hotel room and take a short break of a few hours. I made a reservation for a hotel in Mountain Home, and we braved the wind and rain to backtrack on a frontage road back into town, where after a little kerfuffle with parking, we set up Bill’s Screamin’ Meanie alarm clock. I laid down on my bed in my LD Comforts, and almost immediately fell into a warm, deep blackness.