Edit: .... Looks like Lloyd just posted his # above. He's watching the tracker, which is a great help. Note: All riders were provided his contact info pre-race.

For those in the know the attached link may be superfluous, but at least for me it is new.
Therefore, I don't understand why the phone number of LP in Lordsburg was edited out shortly after he sent his first mail. It may be of use to family and friends of TD racers too.
http://www.adventurecycling.org/default/assets/File/Routes_Maps/pdf/GD_shuttle.pdf

Also the little tourist place in Separ might be a source of someone who could provide a ride.  Does anyone know the name of that place?  That would be a good relationship to develop for future riders.

Yes, it may be worth a try. It is called Continental Divide Trading Post (575-546-3635 or 505-546-3635 ; the latter number is in the Offical NM CD Trail Guide). The store specializes in tourist curios; bikers only find sodas and small snacks there.
There is a car service station next to it, I guess for emergency calls from the interstate, that could do shuttle business.

Sam died just this month.

Sad to hear. He served hundreds of bikers and hikers.

We need help. A bunch of us from Melbourne, Australia that ride with Jesse Carlsson are keen to ensure that there is someone to greet him at the finish. His fiance was surprised by his progress and will be in transit when he makes it to the gate. We are happy to put up $200 to the person that agrees to meet Jesse at the finish with a 6 pack of (decent quality) beer. Any takers? I can organise a funds transfer but we need photographic evidence on the finish ;-) ...  

If no other volunteer turns up, you can always phone Sam Hughes in Hachita (575-436-2662 ; I am not sure about international pre-dials).
Sam is 82, but last year he still did shuttles from the border to Deming and Lordsburg with his Cadillac within your budget.
His business card reads : Prospector - Treasure Hunter ; Tires - Land - Whiskey - Manure - Guns - Gold - Snake Oil -Used Cars - Birth Control Pills - Mining Claims - Mules. I'm not sure if he can do a 6-pack.

Of course, the race is its own little esoteric world...

I don't think it is 'little' or 'esoteric', but perhaps 'little esoteric'. I have done the GDMB Route in a touring mode in both ways in different seasons and tried to estimate the numbers. When you are about 50 days on the trail and count the riders coming the opposite way, I guess you capture about one-third of the yearly total.
Clearly the number of southbounders is much larger than northbounders. My guess is that the total is between 300 and 500. So the TD race field could well be one-third of the total 'herd'.

Probably Adventure Cycling can make a better estimate from the number of map sets sold each year, or Rob Leipheimer from riders coming to his bike shop in Butte.

I am very impressed by rookie Brian Pal. He seemed a junior in Angler's Ovando cafe picture, but he has clearly distanced all his mates and is now geared towards attacking the top-5.
Thanks to his haphazard SPOT, he is flying like a stealth fighter.

Any cut-off time creates an arbitrary category of failure. It's funny how everybody's idea of a cut-off time is something they think they can comfortably achieve themselves (see Mathieu's formula!).

No, I am in favor of the '150% of record time' cutoff.
My formula was just to show what pace is realistic. There are no long and strenuous hike-a-bikes on the GDMBR route. But 120 miles a day isn't comfy. This is precisely the point: racers go roughly 12 hours on a day and recreational riders maybe 6-8 hrs. The prospect of the hardships from riding 12 hours each day during 25 consecutive days deterred me from starting in the TD'11.

I don't know RYK. He might well  be a very likeable person, but at average 60 miles per day he is not racing! He is not different from tens of tourers who are out now on the GDMBR. If more of his kind of attitude join the start field, the TD may well get to close.

I've not downplayed the racing, only stated there should be no time cutoff, meaning, everyone should be allowed to claim an official finish time if they follow the rules.

I would be in favor of a pre-stated challenging time-cutoff. The main reason is that the field at the start is getting too big for an underground race and harmful for the TD character itself. A challenging cut would probably reduce the number at the start, even when there is no way to enforce it. Several TD characteristics such as self-supported, no-drafting, remoteness, wilderness-experience become meaningless in big groups.

In my view,  true racers, in contrast to recreational riders, welcome a challenging target. Last year I toured the GDMBR, in no hurry and with a much heavier load than the TD racers. It turned out that my overall average riding speed was 10.0 mph. For a TD racer the 24h cycle of eat-sleep-ride will be roughly 6-6-12, so a 120 miles average day is certainly within reach for many. This amounts to 23 days for the whole route.

As a blue dot junky, I would even enjoy the extra spectacle of more than one cut-off. One of the funniest bike races is where the peloton is on a circuit and at each lap the last rider is taken off. This creates an urgency at the tail of the field that pushes the whole bunch. And as the field becomes smaller, the elite gets threatened too. The TD could set a maximum time at each state line. Of course, any racer may continue in his self-supported endeavor, but he would be scratched from the Leaderboard.

I certainly do not favor age groups. This is a typical symptom of commercial mass happenings, where everyone earns a golden or silver medal in some phoney category. If because of age you cannot compete on a level playing field for all, there is a dignified response: retirement. It happens naturally.

We had a major electrical storm, thunder, lightening, a little bit of moisture, Kerrin just missed it. What we think happened is that half way down Boreas Jesse had a flat, he was running tubeless and put a tube in. Coming into Como it is pretty open, he was found on the town limits dazed and confused cycling with a totally flat tire saying he was looking for a guy called Como. We sat him down, got some water and coke into him, we thought he had major concussion. He had obviously come down on his right side, knee and wrist hurt but no cuts or major abrasions.

Now he is now lucid, but it took him sometime to come around, he was insisting he was third in the race, all he rembers was the thunder and lightening.

We think he was near a lightening hit and was blown off his bike.

It's JP's ghost.

" Out, damned spot; out, I say.
One, two, -why, then 'tis time to do't.
Hell is murky. "
Lady Macbeth in Act 5.

[quote .... If your life depended on it,.. then you'd carry back up batteries and have them changed timely.
[/quote]

I am not so sure that failure mostly boils down to battery life. It is a critical issue regarding what the device is supposed to do. It would be interesting to analyse the non-performers at the start, when all batteries were probably new, or BP's that worked haphazardly about half of the time. 

Just as last year, the Live Tracker suffers from poor SPOT and/or battery performance. Roughly one-third of the top-10 riders had long drop-out periods. Rather than reassuring, I guess this device adds to the worries at the home front. If my life would depend on it, I would look for a more reliable beacon!

A question for those in the know....

Mike and now Craig have clocked 1600 miles to the 'Golden Spoke' [personally I think 'spike' is a better choice of word] I didn't take particular note of Cjell's milage at that point but working back from where he is having a snooze he would have been on about 1535 miles at that point which = 3135 total miles. That's a good bit more than the alleged 2745 miles on the TD website [and Wiki ... and we know that's the truth!]

As I have said before, there is an error in the statistics chart of the northbound riders. The Route mile in the chart is the distance as if they had started from Banff. The true Route mile for them is (2745 - 'Route mile'). Because this erroneous Route mile  is used in the computation,  the Route average speed and the Route distance per day are also wrong for northbounders.

This error is obvious if you compare CM's stats (Route mile = 1557; RAS = 8.2 mph ; RDPD = 107 mi) and other northbounder Bruce Giroux (Route mile = 2178 ; RAS = 12.6 mph ; RDPD = 302 mi)!

Golden Spoke at the WY/CO border?

My guess is that the Golden Spoke will be on the pass near Meaden Peak, south of Brush Mountain Lodge.
It is not just a matter of interpolating miles or elevation gain, but also services. MH finds only Brush Mountain Lodge on his way, but CM has Steamboat and Clark as temptations for a pause.

The only dot moving up-front during this night is JP's ghost!

Christian Schuler seriously lost his way in the Flathead/Wigwam valley. He has moved in the wrong direction for 1.5 hrs now, as if he was heading out towards Elko, but now he made another wrong turn!

Edit : he was heading out and I am glad that the 'wrong' turn also leads to Elko or Sparwood.

No, northbound riders aren't factored in.  Northbound and southbound are two separate races, run concurrently.  I suppose it would be possible to rank folks according to total miles covered, which would be an interesting number, but not really too meaningful as far as racing goes.

Agree, but there are some miscalculations in the statistics of the individual northbound riders, e.g. their Route average speed, Route distance per day, Moving Average speed. The miscalculations is because the Distance-ahead instead of the Distance-done is taken as the basis for the calculations.

Who dares to give Billy Rice a wake-up call?

Craig Stappler entered Ovando Montana at 1417 hours and is stopping for a quick lunch.  Says things are getting a bit easier but was questioning his decision the first 1 and a half.  He's about 5-7 hours ahead of record currently.

JP ghost is now where CS was 4 hours and 25 minutes ago.

Interesting twist: Stappler taking breakfast at the Hungry Bear Steak House and Hall catching up, but probably going to Holland Lake Lodge for breakfast. See who did the smarter pitstop!

Edit : after some 15 minutes of indecision he also goes to Hungry Bear!

Monee bags up for auction in a week.

I would consider to buy one if it includes at least one hair of C$, to smell his DNA.