In years past, TAR has been scheduled mid-Spring (usually April) on a non-holiday weekend. However, for this year we decided to schedule it over a holiday weekend (Memorial Day). It would potentially save a vacation day for many riders and since Memorial Day isn't typically a big family travel holiday we thought the timing would be okay.
73 riders signed up for TAR and 67 attended. Interestingly, while there are always some riders who register late this year we had a whopping 31 late registrations. 31 is 42% of 73. I've never had even close to this many late registrations. The challenge with so many late registrations is not having enough swag for them when they arrive. And everybody wants swag.
The swag this year was a commemorative baseball cap, a commemorative drinking glass, and a commemorative sticker. All riders who registered prior to the May 1 deadline and attended the rally received the swag. As always, I ordered some extra swag items and gave them out on a first registered - first served basis to the late registrars. But I ran out quickly and so a bunch of the late registrees walked away from check-in disappointed. It's a tough situation. Extra swag has to be paid for and if I order too much it gets really expensive. I organize rallies as my way of contributing to the adventure community and, as such, am not attempting to make a profit from the rally. At the same time I don't want the rally to cost me a bunch of money and to end up with a pile of extra swag sitting in my garage. Nor do I want to disappoint those who, for whatever reasons, weren't able to make the registration deadline. I guess the best I can do is ask for the understanding of those who registered late and didn't get any goodies.
I planned routes for both Saturday and Sunday. While every riding group is welcome to come up with their own route, most opted to run the pre-planned routes. Here's what Saturday's route looked like.
Starting in Junction, we rode west on pavement until heading south toward the first dirt of the day on the superb Old Junction Road. The path west consisted of small county roads with a number of very slick low water crossings. As much as I emphasize the incredible slickness of these crossings, invariably riders will go down on them. Some multiple times. The crossings claimed a lot of victims on Saturday but I think only one notable injury occurred due to one of these crossings. As always, I got lots of water crossing photos.
This couple was riding two up, increasing the difficulty level of the slick crossing. Neither suffered any major injuries that I know of.
Lined up and waiting for their turn.
It's rare to have even one couple riding two up on my rides. Today we had two couples riding two up. She (Janice) was wearing jeans and tennis shoes that got soaked early on. His cowboy boots and jeans didn't fare much better. But they were troopers and soldiered on for most of the day.
How do we feel about low water crossings in the hill country? Really, really good.
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