Rally Club Rallye

I hope you have read the previous post on how great I think Rally Club meetings are. Well on May 12th, Rally Club went to new heights of fun and enjoyment when we actually ran a short Rallye as a part of the proceedings!
In an effort to introduce more people to road rally the TCRC have been toting their services around to possibly help local classic car clubs put on a road rallye for their members. The Intermarque organization in the Twins Cities asked if we could organize a rally for them to round off their "Spring Kick off" celebrations. (Intermarque is the organization of all the European car clubs in the Twin Cities and the Spring Kick off event is meant to signify the start of the driving season for all the classic car clubs.)
A Road Rallye for classic car clubs? What a great idea! The TCRC were very excited at the thought, and long time TCRC member Dave Fuss very quickly had a short route worked out to give people a taster for road rallye. With the date of the Spring Kick off coming up on May 16th we decided to incorporate running a pre-check with this months Rally club meeting.
We all met up near the start point in downtown Osseo, MN where Dave handed out the route instructions, generals, and scorecards. Which was a surprise to us, we weren't just going to pre check the route and mileages, we were going to get timed and scored as well. Just like a regular tour Rallye. We decided that as there was no serious competition involved we'd mix things up a bit and have Lorrie drive and I'd navigate, a reversal of our usual roles.
As we came straight from work we drove in our usual car our Ford Focus but Louis Hardin and Priya Bansal turned up in their Fiat (This was planned to be a rallye for classic cars remember).

The Fiat of Hardin and Bansal 

The Rallye route was only 35 miles or so, which meant that at times the route instructions came thick and fast which added to the fun for us. Maths has never been my strong point, so to have to quickly work out how many seconds up or down we were and read the next instruction was quite hard work. In fact at control 2 we were so far ahead of schedule due to my bad maths that we waited out of sight of the control point for some 50 seconds to try and come in on time, even then we still came in 12 seconds early!
Despite the short distance the route was a lot of fun. Rallymaster Fuss had found some great roads in this tiny quadrant of the NW Twin Cities metro, and in an all too short hour we were at the finish point for an analysis, a short Rally Club meeting, food and beer.

We all had a great time and would like to do something similar again. Our unanimous decision was that this was a great course, one that we thought beginners would have some fun with. 

Did they have fun on the day of the event? Well, you'll just have to wait until I post my Rallye report to find out.