URAL National Rally Day 2014

Today was the now annual URAL Rally Day.

Here's a brief description from URAL: So, what the heck is this rally? Well, it’s like a scavenger hunt. You roll your own route, take in the sights, eat some lunch, maybe even do some wrenching. When you’re done you tote up your points and come back here to record your results. When it’s all over we’ll post up a rally report and let folks know the results. IMWA is providing a prize package again this year – so we’ll be awarding prizes for the top finishers  – as well as 25 lucky riders who we’ll pick in the prize drawing from all the rally finishers.

The rally is world-wide, you can do it on your own as I did, or with a group of fellow Uralisti if you are so inclined.

My rally day started with a flat pusher tire.  I'd been gone all week to Atlanta, GA for work and hadn't looked at the rig yesterday evening after coming home from the airport.

The rules do say that one must swap the tire on the roadside but I think I'll still claim the points for doing a tire swap.  Along with the easy 75 points for doing pre-ride checks of lights, fluids and tires, the swapping of the spare tire for the flat pusher tire had me starting out with 175 points!

Here's the nail, found it after airing up the pusher tire to see if I could

hear any air leaking out.....no air noise heard.  The nail was sealing the hole but

of course, it was a slow leak.

 Ready for the spare tire.

Had to use the pliers to remove the damn nail, air leaked out 

quite nicely once I removed it!

I didn't want to go riding with no working spare tire so I removed the old inner tube, and put in a new one, re-using the old pusher tire as it was fine and with plenty of thread.  I guess that's one advantage of tubed tires.  Now I had a working spare tire, got geared up and got going by 10:15 AM.

Starting odometer reading: 9730.

I rode down to Parker Road which I took through the town of Parker and south on now CO83 all the way to Colorado Springs.  You get 1 point for every kilometer ridden so I elected to ride Scarlett down to Fort Carson near Colorado Springs and stopped near the main gate or Gate #1.

My choice for vehicular wonder

A plane, car, truck, tank - any vehicular wonder - get 50 

extra points if it’s on a pole. 

I don't think there's a stout enough pole to support the weight of an Abrams Tank so I settled for the 25 points the above picture garnered for me.

Views of nearby Pikes Peak were obscured by low lying clouds today so no using the great mountain as a scenic wonder I'm sad to report.

I headed back onto Colorado Springs, taking the exit for the Garden of the Gods in order to get a pic of Scarlett next to the "Scenic Wonders" of this great natural park just west of Colorado Springs:

First scenic wonder:  25 points

 Balanced Rock

Second scenic wonder:50 points

Third Scenic Wonder

100 points 

Exiting the Garden of the Gods, I spent a short time on northbound I-25 in fairly heavy traffic until I reached the exist for Greenland.  Here I would get some extra road points by taking the dirt road from the settlement of Greenland back to CO83, a total of 13 Kilometers x 5 which garnered me an extra 52 points to the eventual total of kilometers ridden.

Think I can claim this tractor on a pole?  :)

Now back on northbound CO83, it was straight up riding back towards Parker and from there back towards my home neighborhoods.  Scarlett's odometer was approaching the 10,000 KM mark so I decided to keep riding about the home neighborhoods to reach the 10,000 km mark so I could do a quick oil change along the side of the road, and also run the rig out of gas.

As you probably guess, both these actions would garner me bonus points for the rally.

 Doing a field oil change in the elementary school parking lot: 200 points

Scarlett and I then headed out on Quincy Road, heading East until we arrived at a dirt county road that headed towards the south.  More dirt road points here as we covered 12 kilometers before getting back on pavement , an extra 48 points!

As I approached the Blackstone Country Club, Scarlett exhibited the signs of gas starvation right at the 300 kilometer mark on the trip meter!  I coasted to a stop on the side of the road and took this picture for proof:

100 points for running the gas tank dry

I removed the Kolpin Gas Can from the left side of the tub and put in about 1.5 gallons of fuel into Scarlett's gas tank.  No real issues except that the "safety spout" that came with the Kolpin can basically fell apart afterwards and became unusable.  Oh well.

I got the my usual gas station and filled Scarlett's tank to the brim and reset the trip meter.  The new low fuel level light which I'd recently replaced, under warranty, works fine so far.

Got home with no further issues, ending odometer reading was 10,050 so a total of 320 points for kilometers ridden.  You get 2 points for every picture taken, I took a total of 23, so that's an addition 46 points for that category.

Lastly, 15 points for the three times I kick-started the rig to life.  I'd forgotten about these bonus points earlier in the rally unfortunately, oh well.

So, I claimed 836 points for today's rally.  Much better than last year's 432 points.

On a totally different topic, just heard that Valencia, my 2011 Patrol, has been sold by Unique Rides to a lady from Washington State!  So begins a new adventure for Valencia.