"Steve made a great decision to quit when he did. He can always enter the draw for another go" ... Anon, ADVRider
There is something I need to explain about this. I have been given a lot of credit, by the entire LD community, for making a positive decision to quit at that point, but it is never as simple as "reaching a point and rationally deciding" I left Dallas for the 2nd Leg, well-rested and in good spirits. I had spotted the large Key West bonus and it made a good anchor for the 2nd Leg. A straight run to KW and back, collecting four bonuses and a 5th on the way out of the Keys (Islamadora 1550 points) was 44 hours of riding time in a 64 hour Leg. BaseCamp is set to provide fairly conservative riding times, and I can always recoup any stopped time at bonuses and gas stops. This was not an arduous ride, and well within my normal planning range. Some have said it was ambitious, but it really wasn't. I left around 7.00 am which meant 17 hours off the bike were possible, and I would still get back in time. 12 hours of that would be rest, leaving 5 hours to pick up bonuses on the way back. Even with nothing on the way back I would have brought in 20k points against a guideline for finisher status of 15k. My first bonus was daylight only (the only DO bonus on the route), and was 700 miles away, in Pensacola. I was due to be hitting that bonus at 3.00 pm. The storms were brutal. There did come a point where riding was no longer safe, and I stopped for an hour. Riding, for the most part, was safe, but slow. It all meant that I didn't hit that bonus until 7.40 pm, a loss of 4 hours 40 mins. A pita, but not yet a tragedy. I grabbed both Pensacola bonuses and headed for Jax, then South. I stopped and got some rest, and that was my first mistake. I didn't get enough rest at that point to even nearly make up for the stress riding in the storms had caused. I grabbed the third bonus around Miami, and headed off into the Keys. I should have been running into Key West before breakfast, when it would have been cooler and with much less traffic. I lost another 45 mins just clearing Miami. Traffic was horrendous, temp was around 100F and the humidity was off the charts. Ice down the jacket helped, but without realizing it I was passing the point of no return. There was also the issue of mis-programming my Garmin Montana, still a mistake I can't explain. My fault entirely, but it was contributing to my making poor decisions. The critical mistake was driving past the bonus in Islamadora. Had I stopped there and used it as my anchor (1550 x 3), I would have made Dallas with a decent score and been ready for the 3rd Leg. That was the point where my IBR ended, but I didn't find out until later. That point was where I committed to a ride that I didn't have the resources to finish. As you know, I got the KW bonus and the rest is in the Ride Report. I knew in advance there would be rain. Nothing in the forecast, or weather maps suggested the ferocity or distance it would cover but ... Erik Lipps saw what I saw. He left after me, took a more northerly route to Jax, missed all the weather and entered the Keys at the time my plan suggested I should be riding in. So it was perfectly possible to do this Leg better, and I missed it. I'm not the only one, but that doesn't help either :) By the time I stopped riding, stopping was not a hard decision, it was the only decision I could make. I was reaching the point where I knew that I was becoming a danger to those on the road around me, and no one deserves that. Maybe, had it been another 50 or 100 miles ... but it was still 1000 miles and I couldn't do that. Through it all, I am happy I retained the ability to judge safety, and that I stopped when I did. Having to make that decision was brought about by a series of my own errors. Each was small, individually they wouldn't have mattered much, but cummulatively they were a hurdle I couldn't overcome. One thing I have learned .... When you face these minor obstacles, be prepared to fully analyze the effect on your route. The sooner you do this, the less effect the obstacles have. Leave it too late and your future is a Did Not Finish, and it was wholly avoidable.