The Prude Ranch was a cluster of buildings surrounded by gravel. I think the only difference between the driveway and the pasture was that the driveway had larger rocks and a looser surface. It's all hazy in my mind, looking back on it now. I was exhausted. There were swarms of motorcycles everywhere. I saw Jack Tollett's face crease into a big smile when he saw me pulling in. I was sent to a large room where Jack's wife, Paula, guided me through my rally paperwork and gave me the best tasting Pepsi I've ever had the fortune to drink. She kept saying "Bless your heart!" as I told her my tales of the trip down, and she introduced me to Cissie Myrick, who I knew from the internet but had not yet met.
I carefully piloted my bike to the pole barn where they were doing the tech inspection. An older gentleman, Smitty, checked my VIN number against my paperwork and told me I couldn't ride the rally because it didn't match. I was very confused by this, since I'd just sat with Paula while she filled out that paperwork and my VIN number wasn't on it. It didn't even have a space for a VIN number! It turned out Smitty thought the drivers license number listed on the paperwork was a VIN number. Maybe I was the first rider he'd checked in? I dug out my insurance and registration cards. Smitty checked those VIN numbers against my bike, and grudgingly admitted they were OK. Then I was off for a quick run to the observatory and back for my odometer check.
Through all of this I saw no sign of Michael. I hoped that they hadn't fallen behind schedule with the U-Haul, that he wasn't lost in the wilds of west Texas. My worries ended when he arrived during dinner.
The rooms were in many different building scattered all over the property, and in the dark I could not see the landmarks listed on the map. After making two circuits of the driveways I realized I was so tired that I would just drop my bike if I kept riding it around out there in the dark looking for my room. I decided to wait until after the meeting and let Michael help me find it.
At the meeting I introduced myself to Joan Oswald. It was obvious to me that while I recognized her name from the internet, she had no idea who I was and couldn't have cared less. Jack handed out a list of the bonus locations, but he didn't tell us what the bonuses were or what their point values would be. He went over the rules, and people asked questions. Suddenly the meeting seemed endless. The questions were hard for me to focus on and seemed trivial.
After the meeting I decided to park my bike in the pole barn where they'd been doing tech inspections; it was one of the few places that had concrete to park on. Michael led me to the room. I didn't spend any time looking at the maps, none at all. There was a rose on one bed and I was too groggy to think about this, so I fell onto the other bed. I vaguely remember commenting on the stuffiness of the room, and Michael came over and put something cold on my wrists... the next thing I knew it was time to get up.
I walked down to the pole barn and had my mileage checked. While I was there, I remembered something I'd failed to do when I put my fairing back on - I hadn't plugged my horns back in. I plugged them in while Smitty fussed. Was I sure I was OK? Hadn't I ought to let him help? (Michael later told me that Smitty worried aloud about me all day, that I might be having trouble with my bike, out there alone.)
After breakfast there was another rider's meeting, and Jack passed out the complete info on the boni. I went back to the room. Michael had brought me a single red rose the night before. I smiled and tried to decide if there was any way to put the rose on the bike. I decided there was not. I sat at the table and made my ride plan.
The base route had three checkpoints. The first one was in Lajitas, down near the border; we were supposed to get our picture taken with the mayor, who might appreciate a beer. I'd heard the tales and knew that this was a beer drinking goat. The second checkpoint was in El Paso, and was the only one that was truly required - we had to check in with the volunteers at a Masonic Temple there between 5pm and 11pm. The third checkpoint was in Lubbock, where we had to collect a gas receipt. Each of these checkpoints carried a hefty point penalty if we didn't visit them. If we didn't check in with the volunteers in El Paso, we would be DNF (Did Not Finish). Lajitas and Lubbock were not truly _required_, we just got penalized if we didn't go there.
I thought of the landscape I'd ridden through the day before, the heat, the emptiness, the flat land. Would there be any interesting riding? No; it would be long flat miles, hours of highway hypnosis. Would the boni be interesting? No; it would be too dark and everyone would be too tired by then for there to be anything interesting about those boni. I decided I just plain didn't want to go there. I also realized that I was not a contender for the win, not when my butt was already dragging after my trip down. What was I hoping to get out of this, anyways? This was supposed to be fun. Lubbock didn't sound like nearly as much fun as the small boni near Lajitas. So I struck Lubbock from my rally plan. Just crossed it out. I didn't tell anyone of this decision, because I didn't want anyone talking me out of it.
I made quick work of the bonus listings. Any boni that were near my route from the Prude Ranch to Lajitas and over to El Paso, I marked on the map with my highlighter. Any that were scattered far from my personal base route, I ignored. I didn't worry about the point values, not even a little bit. Slowly a route began to take shape. It looked like a big figure eight, and the intersection point was Marfa, TX. The Lajitas loop could be run in either direction. On one side of Lajitas, all the boni I wanted to visit were directly on my path. On the other side, the boni would require detours. I chose to take this loop in the direction where I could hit all the boni that were directly on my route first. Once I got to Lajitas, I could evaluate the time and my condition, and decide which of the boni that required detours were worth visiting. As for the boni that could be found anywhere, I put that sheet in my map case for reference while riding.
I had a plan.
On the road outside the ranch, I saw several other riders ahead of me and behind. There was a BMW right behind me, crowding me in the curves. I came to a short straight stretch, whacked the throttle, and watched the beemer disappear in my mirrors. I looked up and saw a grinning Alan Dye standing by the roadside pointing a radar gun at me. I looked at my speedo. I was only going 60mph. No big deal. I rode through Fort Davis and headed south to Marfa.
In Marfa I got gas, and located my first bonus, the Paesano Hotel. The Paesano had a historical marker on the front. Ten points each for historical markers that were attached to buildings or set in stone (no little metal signs allowed). I snapped two pictures, one for the hotel bonus, the second for the historical marker bonus. I got gas and continued south.
Just south of Marfa, I saw an unusual cloud up ahead, a few feet above the road surface. Before I had time to think or react, I was riding through a swarm of bees. Plink plink tap tap tap, they were all over my 'Stich, my helmet face shield, my windshield. Eek! Fortunately none of them got inside my gear, and I didn't get stung.
I kept going over rolling hills of sand and gravel. The roadside vegetation was sparse and weird. Lots of cacti. I saw a few critters here and there, browsing for sustenance in these parched fields; antelope, maybe?
Eventually I arrived in Presidio. The Presidio bonus required me to have my picture taken with the US Customs Service guard at the border station. I was the first rider to arrive. I found the closest parking place I could, without actually having to cross the border, and walked in to where three guards were staring at me as if I just stepped out of a space ship. I explained to them about the rally and asked if any of them were willing to be photographed. They told me that, as federal employees, they were not allowed to have their pictures taken. There was a contract security guard on the premises who was not a federal employee, and maybe he could have his picture taken. (Hmm, the bonus sheet did have "US Custom Service" capitalized, and "guard" with a lower case G. Those devious rallymasters...) They directed me inside to look for this security guard.
I found the security guard, explained the rally, and asked him to pose for a picture. He wasn't sure if he was allowed, and referred me to a Mr. Aguirre to ask permission. I went inside and found Mr. Aguirre, and he granted permission for the guard to be photographed. A woman who was washing the windows agreed to snap the photo. I was heading back to my bike when I saw a couple of other riders rolling up. Looked like that guard was about to have a busy day.
I passed a couple of other riders as I rode back down Presidio's main street to a little store I'd spotted on my way to the border post. At the store, I bought a bottle of orange pop, a bottle of water (the only one they had!) and a bag of chips. My next bonus was the teepee rest area, and I thought that would be a good place to take a break.
Between Presidio and the teepee rest area, I must have passed twenty riders that were going the other way. The layout of this road reminded me of the roads in southeast Ohio, where they are economical with their apexes, i.e.: the top or bottom of a hill was often the apex of a curve as well. The road wound and rose and dipped. The pavement was nowhere near as good as Ohio, and the scenery was very different. Every mile or two, I would pass a sign warning me of loose livestock, and I crossed over a lot of cattle grates. Signs warned me not to drive through water in the road, and in each low spot there was a pole marked with heights off the ground, one foot, two feet, three feet, etc. The land was so dry I found it hard to imagine water over the road. Everything was grey or brown, and the buildings I passed were faded from the hostile sun. I crossed bridges that had no water under them, just gravel and rocks. I didn't see much livestock, and none was near the road. There were steep hills all around, with almost no vegetation on them; they were crisscrossed with channels that appeared to have been scoured by the absent water. Occasionally I would catch sight of the Rio Grande; it was a small stream with green plants growing along it, the only water and the only color in this landscape. I would hate to live in this forsaken place.
I entered a canyon, and in this canyon I found the teepee rest area. There were three metal teepees, each sheltering a picnic table. From the teepees I could look down a gully that I think might have had water in it, somewhere far below. I pulled in and parked. There were several other riders there, and I got one to take a picture while I held my towel. I took off my helmet, stich and boots, and staked out a teepee to sit in for a little while. I watched other riders come and go, and took pictures of several rider's towels. I saw half a dozen riders roar past the rest area without stopping, which seemed kind of odd; I could understand skipping boni that required one to deviate from a planned course, but if they were riding by outside, this bonus was practically in their lap, why not take it? Almost all the riders were heading the other direction, but a few came in from the direction I had. I drank all of my orange soda and was about to start on the water, when I noticed that the bottle I'd bought had "No No" written on it in indelible marker, and a broken seal. Scary. I decided not to drink this water.
On the way into Lajitas, I found some of that livestock in the road. Three donkeys were milling around in the road, impervious to oncoming traffic. I stopped, honked my horn, and waited while they unconcernedly sauntered across.
I found the Lajitas Trading Post without much trouble, and the goats were in a pen out front. Next to the goat pen there were a couple of picnic tables, and all were shaded by a thatch awning. A couple of men were sitting at the picnic tables; they turned out to be GoldWing riders, but not in the rally. We chatted about the rally as I waited for my Polaroid to come up. One of the riders I'd already met at the teepee rest area, John, was heading the same direction I was, and we decided to ride together. John filled his FJ's tank at the Trading Post, but I chose not to, because we needed a computerized receipt for each gas stop, and I was unsure whether they could provide one there; the pumps were the old fashioned kind, and the GoldWing riders said there was a more modern gas station just up the road in Study Butte (which, btw, was pronounced "stoody byoot" not "study butt").
I led John along the road east towards Terlingua. (I don't know much Spanish, but I wondered, did Terlingua translate to "earth language"? Probably not, just a stray thought.) I passed a little souvenir shop, and out front there was a wooden indian. Hey, that's on the list! I pulled over and turned around, and led John back to this shop, where we photographed each other with the wooden indian. Jack had suggested making our rally pics entertaining, so I held two fingers up behind the indian's head.
On the way into Terlingua we passed a driveway that was marked by two animal shaped cutouts on poles. One of them looked to me like it was a bear with a red bandanna around its neck! (another of the bonus items) I looked for another place to turn around, but the next place I found was actually the drive to the When Pigs Fly BBQ, our next bonus. John and I took pictures of the pink pig faces, and bought some water and drank it. I mentioned seeing this bear, and John told me there was a bear with a red bandanna back at the Prude Ranch, plus there was a two headed calf, another bonus item. I decided it would be more efficient to get those photos there, instead of going back, so we continued on.
Soon we came to the more modern looking gas station, and we stopped so I could fill my gas tank. Here we thought we'd part ways. John was planning to go to Lubbock, and I wasn't. The next bonus was 22 miles from the base route, and he didn't think he had time for the detour. But he was waffling, he thought he might go with me, we could hurry and still be in time for him to get to Lubbock. I was also waffling, because the heat was making me very sleepy, and every time I stopped I felt hotter and more tired. In the end, I decided to skip the Study Butte bonus, and make tracks for El Paso with John.
Together we took the road north towards Alpine. We would not see another rally rider until the next morning.
The road from Terlingua to Alpine was straight, smooth, and completely empty. We literally could have gone as fast as we wanted to, and John wanted to go faster than I did. At a certain elevated speed, my bike developed an oscillation that I attributed to the large fork-mounted Rifle fairing, and while the it wasn't unmanageable, I decided I preferred to keep my speed below it. John disappeared up ahead. I mentally waved goodbye, but ten or twenty miles later, he was waiting for me at the roadside, under the roof of an unused border patrol checkpoint. I pulled in and stopped as well, and we stood in the shade drinking water and kicking tires. There was a bit of breeze and it was actually quite pleasant now that we were out of the sun. We discussed the boni. John had not managed to find the Paesano Hotel in Marfa, so I agreed to visit it again with him on the way back through Marfa, and show him where it was.
In Alpine, John was leading, and he suddenly pulled over. He had spotted the Alpine Fire Station. Cool! Fire stations were boni. We took the requisite photos, drank more water, and continued west towards Marfa. We found several historical markers along the way, and got photos of them. Outside Marfa, I took the lead so I could show the way to the hotel. I knew the hotel was two blocks north of the street we were on, on the west side of the street. So I turned a few streets early, planning to approach the hotel from the north so it would be on our right, avoid making a U-turn. On the side street, I spotted a yellow sign with a picture of a fire engine. There must be a fire station around here somewhere! I slowed, and peered this way and that. John pulled up next to me at a stop sign and I told him what I was looking for. He was the one that spotted the fire station. It was right around the corner from the hotel. Not only that, it would have been directly in front of me as I rode in from Ft Davis, and I had totally missed seeing it. We collected our pictures of this fire station, plus some pictures of some historical markers mounted on stones in the town square. I pointed out the hotel to John, and he got his pictures of it, and the historical marker on the wall.
We stopped for gas and water at the same station I'd visited that morning. It was now mid-afternoon. The next place to visit was Valentine, TX; it was directly on our route to El Paso. This bonus was worth extra points if you had a picture of a store-bought valentine card in the picture with you. I told John that we should ride through Valentine, and look for any open store, just in case they have Valentine post cards. We could take the photos at the city limit sign on the west side of town; the sun was at a better angle for west side photos, even if we didn't find a card in town. (It occurred to me later, that there had been a valentine attached to that rose. I should have brought it with me!)
Valentine, TX, straggled out along a half mile or so of roadway. The buildings were all run down and used up looking, and at least half of them were abandoned. There were no open businesses of any kind. We stopped on the west side for our pictures, and continued on.
The next bonus stop was in Van Horn TX, at Chuy's Mexican Restaurant. John and I took the photos, and while we were there we ate dinner. The food was good. I'm a slow eater but I did my best, and hoped that I wasn't slowing John down too much.
Time to make tracks to El Paso. We examined my Texas Gazetteer and found the Masonic Temple; it was right downtown, a block north of I-10. A straight shot from Van Horn. Onward. Full dark arrived as we approached the outskirts of El Paso. John led the way as traffic got thicker and thicker. Where on earth were all these people going on a Saturday night? John darted into a break in traffic and I couldn't follow, a cage blocked my path. Well, we both knew where we were going. I followed I-10, looking for exit 19, the exit we'd chosen from the Gazetteer. Soon I spotted a sign that named streets and exit numbers. It named a 19B and a 19A. Uh oh! Time for a split second decision. I decided 19A would be the better choice. 19A dumped me out on a dark street that went up a steep hill. I rode up the hill looking for the temple. This street seemed to be more residential, though. John appeared as if by magic; he was lost too. I saw some women walking along the sidewalk, and pulled over to ask them for directions. They knew where the temple was, we were on the right street, but it was on the other side of the freeway. We rode back down the hill and over the bridge.
Alan Dye and Cissie Myrick waved us in; they had their bikes parked on the sidewalk in front of the temple. They signed us in, and signed our paperwork. I told them I was not going to Lubbock. John had one more try at persuading me to go, and Alan and Cissie were encouraging, but I was firm. I encouraged John to scamper along without me; if he was going to Lubbock he needed to make track pronto. He looked indecisive, waffled this way and that, and finally decided he'd skip Lubbock too.
While we were there, John looked at his photos and found a problem. In his photo of the wooden indian, the wind had flipped his rally towel so the number wasn't visible. Oh no! No help for it now.
With Alan and Cissie, we discussed how the scoring was likely to be done, how we might turn in the best scores without actually going to Lubbock. None of us knew if boni collected between El Paso and Fort Davis counted, if the rider didn't go to Lubbock. If they didn't count, then collecting them would be a waste of time. But John was so gung ho, I let myself be persuaded to collect them regardless. We mapped out a route for the night.
First on the list was Rosa's Cantina; this was only a few miles away. Cissie was able to give us directions to the neighborhood, though not to the specific building. John led the way back onto the freeway, heading west to the exit Cissie had named, Sunland Park Road. We found it without difficulty, and turned south. When we came to Doniphan Street, John led me to the right. I hadn't really looked at the bonus description, so I simply followed. At the next light, John told me the address was in the 8000 block, so I started watching the street numbers. We were in the 3000 block. We ended up riding about ten or fifteen miles, and the numbers went up, and up, and up, but very slowly. Not only that, we kept passing signs with new city names. Very odd, that the numbers went up, instead of going down again once we entered a new town. Maybe the post office didn't actually consider these small towns to be separate entities? I could see that our route was paralleling I-10, and I wondered why Cissie hadn't given us an exit that was closer to the block we needed. Finally John pulled over and checked the instructions. Rosa's was in the 3000 block. Sigh. Well, we were already part way there, so we decided to go on to the Las Cruces bonus, and pick up Rosa's on the way back. We took the next road towards I-10, and got back on the freeway.
Las Cruces turned out to be farther away than I expected, but we did eventually get there, and we found our way to the rest area described in the bonus listing. It had a fabulous view of the lights in the valley below, but it was crammed full of cars, trucks and RVs, all parked for the night. We managed to find a place to put the bikes, and we found the pet restroom facility described in the bonus description, it was a red fire hydrant. We took the requisite pictures. We also spotted a historical marker mounted on a stone right between the parking lot and the fire hydrant, and two more mounted on the side of the building the human restrooms were in. So this bonus proved 30 points more lucrative than we had expected! I heard later that no one else had found all three historical markers at this rest stop.
Back to El Paso we went, to look for Rosa's. We stopped on the way to get gas. I checked my oil and it was off the stick, oh no! John checked his and it was low as well. He had oil to add, but I did not; my bottle of extra oil was back at the Prude Ranch. Sigh. I went inside to see what I could buy at the gas station. Now, I was running Mobil 1 synthetic oil in my bike. Could Mobil 1 be mixed with dead dino oil? I didn't know. What if it turned to sludge when mixed together? (No, it's not necessary to email me about this, I have since read the Mobil 1 bottle, and it says it is compatible with conventional oils. I just didn't know this then.) I hesitated to add dead dino, but the gas station we were at did not have any synthetic oil. John didn't have any more oil with him; he'd used all his oil in his bike. I decided we'd better look for a Mobil or Exxon station and see if we could find some Mobil 1. We got back on the freeway, and I kept my eyes open. We stopped at two more gas stations in the next hour, and neither had anything but dead dino oil. Finally I gave in and bought the dead dino. It turned out to be less than a half quart low.
Back to Sunland Park drive, and south to Doniphan. This time we turned left. Rosa's wasn't that hard to find. I couldn't tell if Rosa's was still an operating business and just closed for the night, or permanently closed. We got our pictures and went back to I-10.
On the east side of El Paso, we turned south to pick up the casino bonus. At 3am, this neighborhood was hopping! The streets were filled with cars blasting the street with their loud stereos. We came upon the scene of an accident; a car was upside down in someone's front yard, and there were many emergency vehicles on the scene. Once past the accident scene, we pulled up at a light where a pickup truck passed us on the left doing an incredible smoky burnout, and squealed by right in front of us to turn right. The smell of the burning rubber made me want to gag.
At the casino, there were drunken pedestrians wandering the street. John tried to persuade the doorman to let us park the bikes under the overhang by the front door, but he refused. We went into the parking lot and found the motorcycle parking. I stayed with the bikes while John went inside and got the gaming chips we needed. We took the photos. We stopped at the convenience store next to the casino to see if we could find beer and ice to keep it cold on the trip back to the Ranch, but we had no luck. On the way back to the freeway, I kept an eye out for larger stores where we might find beer, or children's toothbrushes, or pet food (all were boni). I didn't spot any.
Outside of El Paso, the border patrol checkpoint was open, and all the traffic was being diverted into it. We were right behind a semi, and couldn't see what was happening at first. Then they waved the semi on, and we got a full view of the drama in progress. Three people were laying on their stomachs with their hands on their heads, and a couple of officers were handcuffing them. A police dog was going nuts, barking up a storm and raging at the bars holding it in the back of a truck. The border patrol officers were stirred up like ants whose nest has just been kicked; they were racing out into the field by the road, running this way and that with flashlights. Someone must have made a break for it, out into the dark. They were all so distracted they could hardly focus on the queued-up traffic or what to do with the rest of us. Finally one of the officers waved us on, in a distracted fashion.
The civil libertarian in me raged at this scene. We have constitutional protection against search and seizure without due process, yet they're allowed to do this stuff because somehow people think it'll stop drugs. Idiots. The so-called "War On Drugs" is not just a threat to all of our civil liberties, it's also ineffective, a waste of tax dollars, and it promotes organized crime. But I digress...
Back out on I-10, traffic thinned to the point where we had the road to ourselves. I rode in the left lane, John rode in the right, and we both ran our brights. It was nice to be able to see so well. Unfortunately I was fading fast. Finally I just had to stop. I saw an exit with a store and pulled ahead, leading us off the freeway. We discovered that we'd just pulled in to "See Live Tigers!" This store was odd to begin with; and my sleep deprived state made it seem even more surreal. It was like a truck stop; there was truck parking and they had places for the diesel pumps, but they didn't actually have any diesel. They had one ancient gas pump out front to fill cars from, and a guy to pump the gas. Inside they had all kinds of souvenirs, mexican blankets, dream catchers, black velvet paintings, lawn art. They also had some grocery items, all wearing a thick blanket of dust and looking like they'd been there for twenty years. Yet the place was still under construction. We looked for pet food and toothbrushes. The toothbrushes were in a locked case; they only had adult sizes, and we needed kid size, so we didn't buy them. I found some cat food, but we needed five pound bags; these were three pound bags and they were all torn, so we didn't buy them either. Looking around, I wondered if all the grocery items hadn't been pulled from shelves of better stores due to being damaged in some way; it was like this shop had been raiding the dumpster behind a grocery wholesaler's warehouse.
I didn't see the tigers. But there were two more wooden indians outside, hooray! I took a picture of John with his rally towel and this second set of wooden indians.
John and I had turned off I-10 and were on Route 118 when the sun came up. We roared across the flat desert land and into the mountains. In the mountains, I had to slow down; I was just too tired to negotiate the winding roads with any speed. Also, we had passed signs warning us of loose livestock, and I didn't want to come around a curve and hit a cow. My fears were justified; during a five mile stretch I maneuvered to avoid cows, deer, and pigs in the road. It was 7:45 when we came to the observatory, which was a bonus. John had told me he'd already gotten the observatory bonus in the morning. I was tired and wasn't sure how long it would take me to negotiate the ten miles of twisties and sweepers between observatory and ranch, so I was going to pass it by. John flagged me down and persuaded me to stop. I collected the bonus with his instructions; I honestly never even read the description myself. We were surrounded by other riders who had also waited to collect this bonus until last.
I pulled into the Ranch a little after 8am, with twenty minutes to spare. John had disappeared someplace; he'd been ahead of me coming down the mountain but I didn't see him at the finish. I collected my photos of the bear and the two headed calf. Later I saw John again. He had stopped at the campground by the Ranch gates, and found some people awake who were willing to give him two cold beers. He looked everywhere for me to give me one of them for the beer bonus, but he couldn't find me, so he sold the beer to another rider for $20, which he donated to the hospital.
Back in the big meeting room, they gave us numbers as we came in the door; they took people's packets and scored them in the order of these numbers. I staked out some floor space in a corner and organizeded out my photos and paperwork. At one point Michael came in hunting for me; he'd heard a third-hand rumor that I had decided to DNF and he wanted to make sure I was OK. I don't know where that rumor came from, unless perhaps one of the riders I'd met on the road and told I wasn't going to Lubbock had exaggerated that statement to mean I planned to DNF.
It's odd, the rumors that go around. At the Crawfish Boil, I heard a rumor from several people, that I had crashed en route. Totally untrue. Where do these rumors come from? Who thinks these things up?
After I finished sorting my paperwork, I sat on a folding chair and listened to the chatter around me. One rider said he just got carried away once he felt the road under his tires; he hadn't stopped for many boni but he had done over 1400 miles. Other riders told tales of the speeds they had traveled. Everyone seemed to be in an odd emotional state, half punchy and half euphoric. Many of the riders weren't making a lot of sense.
Finally my number was called and I turned in my paperwork. I don't even know how I got to the room, but I went to bed and slept like a log. Lunch time arrived far too soon, and we gathered in the dining hall to eat and hear the results. A spokesman for the hospital thanked us for the money raised. The top finishers and the top fundraisers were announced; I didn't know any of them. I finally managed to show Doug Grosjean's vest to some folks. I was still too sleep deprived to have a good recollection of who I talked to or who did what, but the general good cheer of the group sticks in my mind. Nice people.
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