A Summer Solstice Rally primer

We are close to the end of May. The days are getting longer and in a few weeks we will reach the shortest night of the year. The Summer Solstice. That means it will be time for the Summer Solstice Rally. This year the solstice officially falls on Sunday June 21st. So the rally will start off Friday June 19th as the sun sets and end the next morning as the sun rises.

This is one of the great events of the Road Rally calendar in our region and I love to tell my friends all about what we doing and what the rally entails. They generally think we're crazy, driving around western Wisconsin in the dark, but I tend to take the view that stopping up all night for anything is a bit crazy.

I don't think it's the kind of event you'd want to do as your first attempt at a road rally. But I have several friends in the local rally community, novices who haven't participated in many rallies who are on the verge of entering but can't quite pluck up the courage to take the plunge yet. My advice to them is the old cliché.
"Come on in the waters lovely". So the basis for this post is a few of the questions I've been asked about this type of event  and my answers.

Don't you have trouble staying awake all night? In a word. No. The first time Lorrie and I competed in the Summer Solstice rally we were worried about that. To be nodding off at 2am down a quiet Wisconsin backroad and ending up in a ditch. So we packed a cooler full of Diet Pepsi and Mountain Dew, a whole night's worth of caffeine. If memory serves me correctly, we only drank one can each over the entire event. The second year of the event I think we drank more water than anything else. The adrenaline of the event keeps you awake, we really had no problem whatsoever. Once the event is over however, that's another thing. The drive home can be hard work. A stop at Starbucks is pretty well compulsory. 

I'd be scared of hitting a deer. Yes, a deer did catch us a glancing blow last year at about 4:30am, taking our drivers door mirror off. But then again I've also hit a deer driving to work during the week. This is the Midwest countryside, there are deer all over. You will see plenty of them. But they only seem to be active in the dusk and dawn hours. Last year many of them, along with myriad other woodland creatures, lined the route to watch us go by. 

I'd be scared of getting lost. A natural worry. But for the most part the route instructions for the event are kept pretty simple. Getting through the night is challenge enough without having to throw any traps or convoluted instructions into the mix. If you do get badly off course, the G.I.s give GPS coordinates for the next meeting point. There is the slight chance that you may find yourself in an area of poor GPS coverage.

You've got an answer for everything. Aren't there any problems? Concentration can be a problem in the wee small hours. Both years so far, our concentration has lapsed for a moment around 1-2am. The first year we missed a couple of turns, and as a consequence missed a pair of timing controls. The second year, after we had passed the last control of the section we took a wrong turn, and though we were only two miles from the meet up point for the start of the next section we were some 15 minutes late getting there. How come we took so long? Well, by some slight chance we ended up in an area of poor GPS coverage... So we had to rely on some map reading and a sense of direction. 

Getting lost at night in the wilds of Wisconsin? Why would I want to do that? Because, quite honestly, it is fun. A lot of fun. We wouldn't miss it.

If I've allayed your fears over the event then you can register over at MotorsportReg here