Tuesday, November 4, 2014

General Delivery 2014

The last rally of the year for us is in the books.  It was a busy October!

The theme of this year's Florida Digital Scavenger Hunt was General Delivery which started and ended in Brooksville, FL.  In a nutshell, it involved bonuses relating to Generals (historical markers, graveyards, etc.) and Delivery (postal themed items). 

Bonus locations were scattered over the state as for north as  Fernandia Beach to as far south as Miami and the Everglades.  That's a lot of Florida!

Rally books were e-mailed well in advance of the rally so there was no shortage of time for planning.  Along with the Generals and Deliveries came a Wild Card category - Post Offices.  To claim a post office bonus you had to first locate the Post Office and then document your stop with a photo of the PO showing the location and the zip code.  Your score for the bonus was based on the last 3 digits of the zip code.   With most of the General and Delivery bonus scores below 700 points, it made sense to find zip codes that ended in the 800 - 900 range.

You were required to visit at least 3 Generals and 3 Delivery bonus locations with as many Wild Cards as you wanted.  Hmmmm.....I think we're gonna see a lot of Post Office locations.  

Using the USPS web site, we located and plotted a bunch of Post Offices with high scoring zip codes, developed a route that would include the mandatory Generals and Deliveries and filled in the blank spaces with those high point zip codes.  The final route was a bit aggressive with 38 total bonus stops and a route that 356 miles long.  It was going to be a very, very, busy 10 hours.  

Cora was anxious to defend our 2-Up First Place finish last year!  We split the ride down into 2 legs avoiding interstates and seeing rural west coast Florida.  If you are ever in Inglis, Florida around lunchtime check out Shrimp Landing.  Delicious fried shrimp!

Knowing Central Florida is quite heavy on toll roads, we stopped and picked up a SunPass to avoid the toll booths.  It turned out to be a wise investment.

Rider's meetings on Friday night and again on Saturday morning yielded no great surprises and a couple of new Wild Card bonuses should you choose to particiate.   Dollar General stores required a visit and a receipt and/or you could opt to carry a small pumpkin and find and photograph Halloween decorations.  Since we already had a very full plate, we opted not to alter our plan.  As I've said many times before - Plan Your Ride, Ride Your Plan!

There also was a lunch bonus available that required a 30 minute stop for a real lunch.  This wasn't in our plan either but plans can change. 

Launch time was 0700 in rather chilly Florida darkness.  The first bonus was only 7 miles away - a photograph of a historical marker for Fort Dade and General Thomas S. Jesup.  Note that the rider has to be in the pictures for 2-up riders, not the pillion.
Cora was chief photographer for this run.   


The Trilby Post Office was 2 miles away.  


The 3rd stop was again only a few miles away.  The first Fort Dade post office was established here in 1845.  


And in Dade City, you have to get the post office 1 mile away!


4 bonus locations in and it is quickly apparent that this pace is gonna to be challenging.  Disconnect, get off, take the photo, get on, reconnect, plot the next stop, navigate out and off you go.  I see Bluetooth headsets in our near future!

The string of post office stops continued as we ran east across Central Florida.  

Lakeland


Bartow


Historical marker for Fort Blount and General Francis Bartow. 


What would a General theme be without good ole Stonewall Jackson!


We made this a stop since it was such a neat name.  We are actually 15 minutes ahead of schedule at this point.  12 stops and 102 miles into the rally.  It's 9:25 AM and things are looking good.  


Crossing central Florida was a nice run through orange groves and turf farms.  I'm sure the orange growers were nervous with the cold front heading towards them.  Did Frostproof remain Frostproof?

We are now on the west coast in Vero Beach.  This will start the agonizing run north along Highway 1 to Cocoa.  


The temperatures have warmed slightly but the wind....lots of wind!  Weather reports indicated sustained winds of 28-30 mph with gusts exceeding 40.  This is Florida not Texas or New Mexico!  The winds made riding in traffic even more challenging as gusts would push you across a lane of traffic if you weren't paying real close attention. 

More post offices as we negotiated the Saturday traffic which was filled with blue haired little old ladies putting along at 30mph.  Arrggghhh!






Short rant.......no wonder the USPS loses money every year.  There must have been a post office every 3 miles up the coast.  Can anyone say - CONSOLIDATION?

Checking the schedule we were ahead by about 20 minutes with a planned rest break coming up.  We decided to take advantage of the lunch break and the 2000 point bonus.  Delicious huh?


Receipts were gathered and we spent exactly the required 30 minutes starting at 12:31 and ending at 13:01.  The gal at the register was amused by our fascination with the time on the receipts.  I'm not sure she ever understood the explanation.  

We made a mandatory stop at the first post office in Melbourne. 


And the old Eau Gallie Post Office which was in operation from 1900-1925. 


We continued north to Cocoa before making the turn west to head back to the start finish.  Traffic has taken it's toll on us and we're now a couple of minutes behind schedule.  It's 14:31 and we've covered 265 miles and a total of 31 bonus stops.  


The Sunpass now started to pay for the investment.  West on Hwy 528 Toll and we didn't have to even slow down for the toll booths, just hit the express lane and roll on. 

We had a bonus planned in Orlando but were getting close on time so we decided to skip this one and continue to make up time rolling through toll booths. 

The rest of the bonuses were right along the route back to the finish line.  







Mascotte was our last stop of the day.  Now it's just a leisurely run to the finish line across Hwy 50 to Brooksville and the finish line.  

We pulled into the finish for an official stop time of 16:52 - 8 minutes to spare.  375 miles on the odometer and the GPS reflected an average speed of 36.3 mph.  I wish that I somehow could have kept count of the number of times we stopped and started.  Between bonuses and the ever present traffic signals, the number had to be somewhere well north of 100.   That's a lot of clutching, braking, and gear shifting!

We got our paperwork together, got scored without losing any points at the scoring table, and got cleaned up for supper.  

We finished with a total of 32,427 points and successfully defended 1st Place in the 2-up category and were in 3rd place by points overall.  Congrats to Jesse Lucas for his first place finish and David Clark for 2nd.  

The ride home Sunday as a chilly one.  Temperatures as we left Brooksville were hovering around 38 and they didn't improve a lot until much later in the day.  Ask Cora her opinion about leaving heating gloves at home!  She had some chilly fingers before the day was over even with some Hot Hands shoved into her gloves.  

Cora is turning into a real hard core rally co-rider.  Not once did I hear a complaint of any kind, her record keeping of times, odometer readings, etc. is excellent, a good navigator, and turns out she is also a good photographer.   Kudos to the 21 year old! There aren't many female 21 year old college students with their own IBA number and all top 3 finishes in her rally career.  Yes.....I'm a proud Dad.