This was a long and difficult day. We tried to do all of the bonus locations, but I messed up early.
Right after CP1, I made a bad nav decision taking Mitchell Ranch Rd instead of Puckett Rd to Harral Rd.
This shortcut should have saved us about 6 miles.
Instead, we went a half mile down a very rough dirt road before turning around, then we went through a closed ranch gate
and were making good progress towards Harral Rd when I made another wrong turn ending up at a dead end about 1km from Harral Rd.
From there, we backtracked, rejoined Mitchell Ranch Rd, and finally got to Harral Rd. What Google Maps said should take 55 minutes (35 miles, partially dirt)
actually took us 115 minutes and involved a lot of riding in rough dirt conditions.
Things went find after that until we encountered a 7 mile section of Crocket Line Rd which was washboard rough and covered with white, powdery dirt. The vibrations were killing us, so we sped up and blasted down the 7 miles. This vibrated out 5 of the 6 bolts holding my gas tank on the Benelli so that it was bouncing up and hitting me in the back. At the end, we tied it back down with zip-ties (which lasted about 1 day) and proceeded to our gas stop at CP2 Comstock Motel. But after the fuel stop, the Smax would.not.start. Debugging this took us about 100 minutes. It turns out the problem was the Smax's air filter had packed with dirt after all that dirt road riding, especially the last 7 miles. That, combined with the fuel vent issue which puts excess fuel into the air box when the aux tank is full caused it to run too rich to start. We diagnosed the problem by taking off the fuel injector to check if it was getting fuel. With fuel spraying from the injector and pointed into the open injector mounting hole, the bike ran. It was getting air from the injector hole instead of the air filter. Ah ha! Not getting enough air, exaccerbated by too much fuel. That's the problem! After knocking out the air filter and tying off the fuel vent line, we got it to run properly and proceeded on our way.
Now about 2.5 hours behind nominal. We were tired and even the sweep truck passed us.
We blew off bonus locations #6 and #7 but did meet Chris's comitment to getting ice-cream.
In the town of Leakey, I asked a guy if there was ice-cream in town, and he directed me around the corner to an ice-cream truck where we got milk-shakes.
This break added another 24 minutes, but added enough energy for us to finish, 3 hours late.
After reaching Kerrville, we took our picture, were too late to visit the scoring table, but quickly checked into our (seedy) Motel 6, then drove across town to Popeye's for dinner.
It was late when we got back, but we washed out the Smax air filter with gasoline, then left it to dry overnight and went to bed.
Our hotel is Motel 6-Kerrville 1810 Sidney Baker Street, Kerrville, TX 78028
Day 7, Pecos Texas to Kerrville Texas
| Time | Minutes | miles | mph avg | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5:45am | 0.2 | Fairfield Inn & Suites Pecos | ||
| 5:46am | 0.4 | 0.0 mi | 0.1 mph | Breakfast at the hotel(!) |
| 5:46am | 32.0 | Breakfast at the hotel(!) | ||
| 6:18am | 3.8 | 0.5 mi | 8.3 mph | |
| 6:22am | 0.6 | Best Western Plus CP0 START | ||
| 6:22am | 35.8 | 30.4 mi | 51.0 mph | |
| 6:58am | 2.9 | Bonus #1 Coyanosa Post Office | ||
| 7:01am | 33.0 | 28.7 mi | 52.1 mph | |
| 7:34am | 14.6 | fuel stop Chevron (top up) | ||
| 7:49am | 40.6 | 30.8 mi | 45.6 mph | |
| 8:29am | 2.7 | CP1 Century Gas processing facility | ||
| 8:32am | 22.5 | 10.5 mi | 28.1 mph | |
| 8:54am | 2.5 | Mitchell Ranch Navigation check | ||
| 8:57am | 9.2 | 2.8 mi | 18.1 mph | |
| 9:06am | 1.7 | another navigation check | ||
| 9:08am | 7.1 | 1.8 mi | 15.4 mph | |
| 9:15am | 1.8 | shit! end of the road -- now we backtrack | ||
| 9:17am | 9.8 | 2.4 mi | 14.7 mph | |
| 9:27am | 1.7 | another navigation check | ||
| 9:29am | 41.0 | 19.1 mi | 28.0 mph | |
| 10:10am | 3.2 | Bonus #2 Harral & Hat A Rd (lost ~50 minutes) | ||
| 10:13am | 55.5 | 47.0 mi | 50.8 mph | |
| 11:08am | 8.4 | Bonus #3 Independence Creek Bridge | ||
| 11:17am | 33.3 | 26.6 mi | 47.9 mph | |
| 11:50am | 3.1 | Bonus #4 Fort Lancaster Scenic Overlook | ||
| 11:53am | 18.4 | 15.0 mi | 49.0 mph | |
| 12:12pm | 5.7 | Bonus #5 Co Rd 405&406 intersection | ||
| 12:17pm | 53.2 | 32.8 mi | 37.0 mph | |
| 1:10pm | 8.5 | Pandale Church nav decision -- split right to Comstock Motel (77vs55 min) | ||
| 1:19pm | 67.9 | 53.7 mi | 47.4 mph | |
| 2:27pm | 105.8 | CP2 Comstock Motel and fueling/air filter problem | ||
| 4:13pm | 104.4 | 83.3 mi | 47.9 mph | |
| 5:57pm | 23.0 | CP3 Drive Tanks Museum | ||
| 6:20pm | 57.8 | 46.6 mi | 48.4 mph | |
| 7:18pm | 0.6 | skipped #6, deciding to skip #7 | ||
| 7:19pm | 1.0 | 0.1 mi | 3.4 mph | |
| 7:20pm | 23.7 | Leakey Sweet Spot ice-cream break | ||
| 7:43pm | 83.2 | 64.5 mi | 46.6 mph | |
| 9:06pm | 12.1 | CP4-END Holiday Inn Express & Suites Kerrville | ||
| 9:19pm | 2.4 | 0.7 mi | 16.6 mph | |
| 9:21pm | 20.0 | checking in to Motel 6 Kerrville | ||
| 9:41pm | 8.0 | 3.2 mi | 24.0 mph | |
| 9:49pm | 45.0 | dinner at Popeyes | ||
| 10:34pm | 9.1 | 3.3 mi | 21.5 mph | |
| 10:43pm | Back at Motel 6 going to bed (17hr day) | |||
| 17h42m | 11h38m moving | 505 miles | 112.4 mph | 66% moving, 365 minutes of breaks |
At about 2pm the Pavement ended on Crocket Line Rd turning to a rough washboard surface covered with fine, white, powdery dirt. We got back on pavement at 2:16pm at the end of the 7 mile dirt section of Pandale Rd where we repaired the Benelli's auxillary fuel tank rack rack.
14:45hrs (884 minutes) --- elapsed time from CP0 to CP4 (6:21am to 9:06pm)
675 minutes moving and 209 minutes stopped (+31%)
22 minutes for 2 fuel stops
51 minutes for 9 CP and BP photos (~6 min each)
and 136 minutes of additional misc break(down) time
496 miles, 44.1 mph
A day marred by navigational errors and a significant breakdown which we managed to fix on the road.
Crocket Line Rd turned became unpaved for 7 miles. It was washboard rough and covered with white, powdery dirt. The vibrations were killing us, so we sped up and blasted down the 7 miles. This vibrated out 5 of the 6 bolts holding my gas tank on the Benelli so that it was bouncing up and hitting me in the back. At the end, we tied it back down with zip-ties (which lasted about 1 day) and proceeded to our gas stop at CP2 Comstock Motel.
After the fuel stop, the Smax would.not.start. Debugging this took us about 100 minutes.
It turns out the problem was the Smax's air filter had packed with dirt after all that dirt road riding, especially the last 7 miles. That, combined with the fuel vent issue which puts excess fuel into the air box when the aux tank is full caused it to run too rich to start.
We diagnosed the problem by taking off the fuel injector to check if it was getting fuel.
With fuel spraying from the injector and pointed into the open injector mounting hole, the bike ran. It was getting air from the injector hole instead of the air filter. Ah ha! Not getting enough air, exaccerbated by too much fuel. That's the problem!
After knocking out the air filter and tying off the fuel vent line, we got it to run properly and proceeded on our way.
While taking this break, the sweep truck passed us for the final time.