Welcome to the Two Wheeled Texans community! 
Feel free to hang out and lurk as long as you like. However, we would like to encourage you to I entered the Texas Two Step Rally this year and just completed an 1,140 mile run on my bike. The Rally has checkpoint cities that you have to make, and bonus locations all over the State of Texas to visit and document your presence by taking a polaroid picture, recording the time and odometer and answering some questions. It’s a 32 hour rally that starts at 4am on Saturday, ends at noon on Sunday, and has an 8-hour mandatory stop that has to start by 4pm and end no sooner than 12 midnite. We had 4 mandatory checkpoint cities - Dallas, San Angelo, San Antonio and College State. The checkpoints and bonus locations were not disclosed until our rider meeting on Friday nite, which only left a couple of hours to plan the ride.
The ride started in Dallas at 4am Saturday morning with riders quickly fanning out in different directions for their chosen routes. I headed west, with several bonus stops between here and and Dudley (just south of Abilene), and then a mandatory checkpoint in San Angelo. Then on to Brady, Llano, Blanco and down to San Antonio. I checked into a Best Western in San Antonio at 3:49pm, checked out at 12:30am, got a mandatory gas receipt, and headed east on I-10 to Luling, up to Lockhart, Bastrop and Taylor. From there, it was down to College Station, another mandatory checkpoint.
I blasted over to I-45, and then north a while until getting off for bonus locations in Wortham (grave of Blind Lemon Jefferson) and Corsicana. The ride back to Dallas from Corsicana was a little hairy. The cold front was blowing in, and the cross-winds on I-45 were terrible. There were some scary moments near Ennis especially, as I was having a hard time keeping the bike in my lane.
Back in Dallas, I made my last stop - the Scottish Rite Hospital - for a mandatory pic. Time was getting short, and I was worried about not making it to the finish line by noon (which would be an automatic disqualification). Before I could snap the last pic, I knocked my polaroid camera off the bike and broke it. I had to dash off to an Office Depot and buy another one. Got it, came back and got the pic, and made a mad blast to the finish line.
I crossed the finish line with approx 8 minutes to spare, and some 1,140 miles later, tired but feeling good about accomplishing something.
So why am I bitter? Well, I got DNF’d (i.e., “Did Not Finish”). Why? Because the motel I checked into couldn’t generate a receipt that showed my checkin time and checkout time. I had the clerks write it in by hand, sign and date it, and add their cell phone numbers so they could be contacted for verification. One was even a notary and added his notary info. I even called the rallymaster and explained the problem. I did some other things to document it.
All to no avail. The official scorer says DNF, and there’s no appeal. So, I rode the ride, but the official records don’t show it. I know I did it, and that’s what matters. But it's a bitter pill, nonetheless. I just picked a hotel that couldn’t produce a computer-generated time stamp on the receipt. A technical non-compliance? Yes, no question there, and that's my fault. But the spirit of the rule is to make a rider get some rest, which I did. I could have gone to a gas station and got the receipts, and spent 8 hours standing in the parking lot getting no rest, and that would have satisfied the rules. Oh well.
This is the first rally I’ve ever entered, and perhaps my last.
The ride started in Dallas at 4am Saturday morning with riders quickly fanning out in different directions for their chosen routes. I headed west, with several bonus stops between here and and Dudley (just south of Abilene), and then a mandatory checkpoint in San Angelo. Then on to Brady, Llano, Blanco and down to San Antonio. I checked into a Best Western in San Antonio at 3:49pm, checked out at 12:30am, got a mandatory gas receipt, and headed east on I-10 to Luling, up to Lockhart, Bastrop and Taylor. From there, it was down to College Station, another mandatory checkpoint.
I blasted over to I-45, and then north a while until getting off for bonus locations in Wortham (grave of Blind Lemon Jefferson) and Corsicana. The ride back to Dallas from Corsicana was a little hairy. The cold front was blowing in, and the cross-winds on I-45 were terrible. There were some scary moments near Ennis especially, as I was having a hard time keeping the bike in my lane.
Back in Dallas, I made my last stop - the Scottish Rite Hospital - for a mandatory pic. Time was getting short, and I was worried about not making it to the finish line by noon (which would be an automatic disqualification). Before I could snap the last pic, I knocked my polaroid camera off the bike and broke it. I had to dash off to an Office Depot and buy another one. Got it, came back and got the pic, and made a mad blast to the finish line.
I crossed the finish line with approx 8 minutes to spare, and some 1,140 miles later, tired but feeling good about accomplishing something.
So why am I bitter? Well, I got DNF’d (i.e., “Did Not Finish”). Why? Because the motel I checked into couldn’t generate a receipt that showed my checkin time and checkout time. I had the clerks write it in by hand, sign and date it, and add their cell phone numbers so they could be contacted for verification. One was even a notary and added his notary info. I even called the rallymaster and explained the problem. I did some other things to document it.
All to no avail. The official scorer says DNF, and there’s no appeal. So, I rode the ride, but the official records don’t show it. I know I did it, and that’s what matters. But it's a bitter pill, nonetheless. I just picked a hotel that couldn’t produce a computer-generated time stamp on the receipt. A technical non-compliance? Yes, no question there, and that's my fault. But the spirit of the rule is to make a rider get some rest, which I did. I could have gone to a gas station and got the receipts, and spent 8 hours standing in the parking lot getting no rest, and that would have satisfied the rules. Oh well.
This is the first rally I’ve ever entered, and perhaps my last.
Thanks....I feel sorry for you though 
Hey, at least you tried. So what if they are inflexible, live and learn. Did you have fun during the rally? If so, do it again and next time make sure about the hotel before you check in. You might also consider writing a very polite letter to the rallymasters explaining the situation and ask that they reconsider theh rule for the upcoming rallies. Like you said, you met the spirit of the rule. Of course, they could decline to change it because let's face it, simple inflexible rules are easier to enforce. If you've ever been in the position of being one charged with enforcing rules, you know how hard it is to get people to follow even simple rules 
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