My efficient Leg 1 ride had paid off with an impressive 3rd place overall, barely one bonus behind Jim Owen in 1st place. Nice. Still, that was a lot of miles, and I knew that I couldn’t keep up that same pace for the entire 11 days.
Leg 2 started in Carmel, IN and ended in Huntsville, AL 2 1/2 days later. As expected, most of the bonuses were in the northeast and along the eastern seaboard. That allowed for a big clockwise loop up into NY and down the coast, before turning west towards AL. There were some nice points in ME, but that was a bit too far out. Plus I wanted to make the NC bonus, which was part of a combo that was worth an extra 5,831 points.
Since NC was part of the rally-wide bonus listing, we had all that information from the beginning of the Rally. As I prepped my laptop and GPS for the leg 2 planning session, I decided to look at a couple of NC scenarios. It was just a bit too far to go directly from checkpoint 1 and try to reach Kitty Hawk, NC on a Friday afternoon by 5 pm. It was also just a bit too far to leave Kitty Hawk on Sunday morning and reach the checkpoint in time that evening. So NC would have to be on Saturday. The only question was whether I would hit NC right at opening, leaving me lots of time and miles to gather things in the south on the way in to the checkpoint, or whether I could arrange my daylight timing to maximize my eastern seaboard points and hit NC nearer to closing, with plenty of time to get to the checkpoint. And yes, ME was just too far out there.
Then I looked up, and realized it was 11:30 pm and I had to be up at 3:30 am to get the next leg’s bonuses. Shit. There went 3 hours of much-needed sleep. Bad call on my part…
I went right to bed, but knew that I was still tired as we received the bonus listings. Some quick planning showed that I could make a 5 pm cutoff bonus in central NY and then get a daylight-only bonus just to the east before turning south. If I could push through to midnight, I could get my leg 2 rest bonus and get caught back up on my sleep, then hit the eastern seaboard in daylight and grab NC just before it closed at 5 pm.
It was a good plan, with good points and some options to either extend or pull back, depending on how things were going and how I was feeling.
And I was having trouble executing. That lack of sleep at the checkpoint hammered me all the way across IN, OH, PA, and NY. At one point, I pulled into a truck pull-out area and slept for half an hour, just because I was having trouble focusing on the road. That helped, but I was still a bit tired and out of focus. Plus it used up all my time cushion to get to the NY bonus before the 5 pm cutoff.
Now I’d done something similar in 2017, where I stopped 6 hours into the second leg and got a motel to get some solid sleep because continuing on would have been stupid and dangerous. Refreshed, I went on to complete that leg with the second highest points.
I figured if I could make the NY bonus on time, then I’d look at the next daylight-only bonus 3 hours down the road. If I could make that, I’d look at where I’d be at midnight to start my proper rest bonus. And if needed, I could always just stop where I was and get the sleep I needed, even if it cost me some points overall. I know as well as anyone that none of the bonuses count if you don’t make it safely to the next checkpoint…