On January 1st, 2011, hordes of people and hundreds of motorcycles descended upon Chief’s Towing in Bloomington, MN for the 63rd Annual I-Cycle Derby. Chief’s graciously hosted the event in their heated garage.
Ok, a slight exaggeration – there were 13 motorcycles and three dozen spectators and volunteers.
There were even three Urals including mine!
It was a cold day with temps ranging from 4-10F. There was also a strong wind. The night before we had freezing rain and then a dusting of snow. It made for interesting conditions.
The I-Cycle Derby is run by Traveler’s Motorcycle Club as it has been since 1986. The club very generously provided all of the volunteers and lunch to the event!
The derby is run as a motorcycle road rally or time speed distance (TSD) rally. The object of the event is to maintain precise average speeds and to arrive at the checkpoints at a precise time determined by your start position. The lowest points wins.
Points are given to a rider if they do not arrive at the checkpoint at their predicted time. Two points for each minute early and one point for each minute late. This discourages speeding. Most of the route had an average speed of 30MPH with actual speed limits ranging from 30-55MPH. Stop signs, stop lights, and trains made things more interesting.
The event was run in two stages. One in the morning, and one in the afternoon. Each stage was 25 miles long and took us through the twisty roads in the south metro including some in Minneapolis and St. Paul. We plan on riding the route again in the spring. It was nice!
Each rider was given a route card at the start and then followed that to the first checkpoint.
At the checkpoint their arrival time was recorded and they were given the next route card to the next checkpoint. Three checkpoints for each stage.
For the morning, we were doing pretty well for our first time. We were in 5th place with 11 points. In the afternoon, things got a bit harder. We got lost twice and quickly racked up the points. We finished in 7th place (out of 13) with 56 points. The winner had 7 points and was on a Ural! The other Ural finished in 4th place with 20 points. 5th place had 46 points.
The top five finishers received trophies. The rest of us were happy just to have completed the event!
I was glad my wife rode with me. She sat in the sidecar and read the route cards to me. She was a good navigator and companion. It was nice having someone else around when lost. We both had a lot of fun and are looking forward to the 2012 event.
One of the spectators made this great short video. According to our friends, the clip from 0:05 to 0:07 was featured on the CBS 10pm news that night. It was my wife and me on the Ural. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see it on TV.
My full flickr album here with a couple pictures generously provided by Gigi Nielsen. There are a lot more bike shots in the full album.
My YouTube Video of the event (720p):
