Rum Runner 2015

Sunday, October 18th 2015 saw the third annual Rum Runner Road Rally on the gravel roads outside of Princeton, MN.
As you may well remember, last years running of the event was cut short by a law enforcement officer responding to local complaints. So this year, wanting to avoid a repeat of the situation I sent letters out to the County Sheriffs and Police department of the area covered by the rally, letting them know our intentions.
This years event had the misfortune of being scheduled against the Lake Superior Performance Rally (a round of the RallyAmerica championship) and Chumpcar racing at Road America. We lost control workers to the LSPR and many potential competitors to the Chumpcar race. Though having seen pictures and reports from friends at Road America, more time seems to have been spent repairing cars than actually racing them, one car breaking down an hour from the finish. A huge disappointment to them for sure. I like to think this was probably a message from the Road Rally gods to compete in the Rum Runner instead next time.
This shortage of numbers did cause me some worry, as I was faced with the thought of having to cancel. But come the day of the event we had 7 cars and crews willing to help out and both run and work. This is a skill which does seem to be essential just in case a rally has low numbers or something untoward happens during the event, and with four class E experts in the field we had more than enough people able and willing to help.
However, your Rallymaster being new to the situation was having a bit of trouble at times, and the first half of the event was pretty darned chaotic with some entrants running at two minute intervals and others one. One minute is not enough time to set up a control point, which saw me in the unfortunate position of trying to set up control 2 as the first car came round the corner!
Still, we managed to claw our way through the first half and at the midway break we all regrouped and with the help of senior TCRC members Clarence Westberg and Dave Fuss we got a new strategy in place. Renumbering the cars was blindingly obvious to them, but took me a moment to grasp the concept.
The second half went pretty well flawlessly, and everyone arrived at the finish very happy having enjoyed the wonderful blue skies and sunshine of the day.
At one point on the second half as I was heading to the final control I happened along several competitors in their cars coming the other way, everyone was smiling, and gave me a cheery wave. It was a grand day for a Road Rally there was no doubt as these pictures show.

Gary Starr and Sharon Bringen

Brian Jacobson and Dave Fuss

Clarence and Kate Westberg

Mike Thompson and Fred Rosevear

The Gary Starr car approaches control 8

Tony and Kaitlyn Stamson near control 8

The TCRC loves the Motorsport themed Finish Line Cafe in Princeton as an end point to gather to score and swap stories about the competitors adventures and the ownership are happy to have us there to award our prizes, and this year we had an usual problem. Previous Rum Runners have always yielded and outright winner. But not so this time, as three teams tied with zero points! How do you split cars that scored no points at all? I couldn't think of a tiebreaker and as we had enough trophies to go around all the winners got rewarded.
Class E winners were Fred Rosevear and Mike Thompson who made the trek from Madison, Wisconsin to be with us. Traveling that distance is most appreciated. They shared first prize with TCRC's Clarence and Kate Westberg.
Winner in Class J was the team of David and Andrew Gawboy with another zero score.
Unusually, we only had one Novice crew John Dixon and Ben Daeuber who came from Fargo, traveling that distance certainly deserved an award.

Happy smiling faces check their scores and tuck into their food

Swapping stories.

In closing then, a huge thank you to everyone for turning up and helping to make the event the fun success it was. Thanks to the staff at Coffee Corner in Princeton for letting us do registration, and to the staff at the Finish Line for allowing us to end the event there.
One last thing, your Rallymaster used his 1976 MGB as car zero. The weather was good enough to be driving with the top down, though the dust from the gravel roads led to a very dry throat for the entire evening afterwards and a rather dirty little British sports car.  Perhaps sometime in the future someone will run their classic car on the Rum Runner. I'll look forward to that day.

Trails and tours

It's heading inexorably towards winter here in Minnesota and while snow on the ground means the end of a lot of peoples activities not so here. Minnesotans make use of the outside 365 days a year. Whether you hunt, ski, or ride a snowmobile the outside is calling even if it is below freezing. Even the Road Rally community makes the most of the winter. Snow covered gravel roads are a great leveller and the winter champioship is hotly contested.

But we still find time for fun and in the coming months we will see two of the state's outstanding fun events. Both events are put on by Mark Larson.

First up is the Tombstone Trail. Coming up on October 24th. This Halloween themed event is a firm favourite and is in its 38th year of running. Competitors meet up at a different start point every year and drive around the graveyards of Eastern Minnesota and Western Wisconsin, following route instructions, stopping off at cemeteries along the way where they have to answer questions about some of the occupants. Some questions are easy, others not so. That means competitors have to roam around graveyards at night to find the answers. What mkes this event extra special is that some non rally members of the public who have followed the event for many years add to the atmosphere by "haunting" the graveyards. There is no telling what surprise you might get.
If, like me, you are of a nervous dispostion when it comes to "ghostly matters" you might want to get a team of grave inspectors to rummage around among the headstones while you remain safely ensconced in the car.

The Tombstone Trail comes highly recommended among the road rally fraternity in the area. The rally nearly always fills up its full complement of 40 spaces so if you are interested you might want to get over to the event website to sign up. 

Perhaps you don't want to be scared to death on a weekend but would still like to get out on a different type of rally, then coming up in December is the Holiday lights tour. It's a similar format to the Tombstone but this time you drive around the Twin Cities suburbs checking out the lighting displays in peoples gardens. Details on this event will be released nearer the time. But this too, is aanother good time. A chance to meet up with rally friends in an informal atmosphere. We attended our first Holiday llights tour last year and had a blast. You may well recall I wrote about it last year if not click here to be reminded of the event. We will be signing up for that one for sure when registration opens.
Both events make a pleasant change from the usual sort of Road Rally.