Rum Runner 2014 Rallye report

Sunday October 5th dawned bright and sunny, it looked like a great day for a road rally as the organizing crew of my wife Lorrie, and I headed down to Coffee Corner in Princeton, MN to set up registration. Novices, being novices were showing up early and before the allotted time for the beginning of registration I was busying myself with some Road Rally 101 classes for them. The coffee shop filled up with entrants and crew very quickly and with the weather being as nice as it was people spilled over onto the tables outside to review their instructions in the bright sunshine. 

Lorrie starts work at registration 

Crews work on the instructions outside

Twelve cars of varying sorts had registered for the event (a new high for the Rum Runner events) and all of them set off on the rally at 1pm. This included a Fiat Spider, and Alfa Romeo Spider as well as a Ford F-150 and the usual Saabs, Subarus and Audis. 

The Rum Runner, being a relatively new event can still be relied on to turn up a whole new set of roads, indeed all but a few miles of this course were new and those that had been used before had been travelled in the opposite direction. The vast majority of the roads were gravel and I was quite proud of the route that I had put together and the colors of the fall leaves and the sunshine made for a very scenic drive.

Fall colors on the Rallye route

For the most part the event proceeded without too many issues, a control point worker took a wrong turn going to their control point and nearly missed setting up at one of their locations. But we were on it and there was a contingency placed that wasn't needed in the end. 

So, everything was going well until control 10. As I approached the control Kerry Freund told me that he'd just seen a deputy who was asking about what was going on. He had explained to the officer what was happening and gave him my phone number if he had any further questions. Which he did. I talked to the guy on the phone and he was mad. He shut the Rallye down there and then or issue us with a citation. I wasn't going to argue with that. He came back to the control where I got the chance to talk face to face. 

Apparently he had received complaints from some people about "loud cars with big numbers on them" driving recklessly. He had (mis) understood that this was a time trial or some kind of race and was adamant that we needed a permit. He proceeded to give me a long winded explanation as to why a permit was required comparing us to bike races and charity motor cycle rides. 

He did even check one of the cars over that answered the description of a "loud" car. But let them off with a warning.

When it comes down to it the officer was only doing his job. Someone had complained and he was doing his duty to investigate. I apologized for the confusion and work I had caused for him and we parted on civil terms. 

With that the event was done and I sadly ordered everyone back to the Neighbors Saloon in Princeton to see what we could salvage from the day. It was a long, depressing drive back from control 10 to the end point. Plenty of time for me to mull the situation in my head. Yes, a letter to the local Sheriff letting him know of the event might well have stopped this from happening, but the sending of a letter hadn't been mentioned by my "mentors" on previous Rum Runner events so I never gave it a thought. Besides, this deputy was so angry he could've even stopped the event if we had filed a letter with the Sheriffs office.

Thirty miles of thinking things over meant I was quite depressed when I arrived at the bar, but I needn't have worried, every one was more than happy with the event, the roads came in for many compliments, and everyone had had a good time. 

As the Rallye had passed through nine controls we decided that we would score the Rallye as far as there. We had some very experienced scorers able to work with the truncated scoring and a timing error that had crept into the tulips unnoticed. Tulip for iPad is a great App but support for it has ceased. That's a pity, its simplicity of use made it great for me when putting on the first Rum Runner.

In the end everyone was happy with the results and the winners in Stock, and also overall with just 4 points were Louis Hardin and Priya Bansal, they'd come all the way from Madison, WI in their Fiat Spider.

Hardin and Bansal arrive at control 8

Winners in Equipped were Mike Thompson and Fred Rosevear scoring 7 points. Fred and Mike too, had come from Madison.

Thompson and Rosevear at Control 8

Novice winners with just 11 points were TJ Oistadt and Jeff Nordlie also from Wisconsin. 

Oistadt and Nordlie arrive at control 4

As Rallymaster I'm very grateful to all the winners traveling all for several hours to get to our little rallye. I hope you're telling everyone back home what a fun little event the Rum Runner is and will persuade more of you to come over in February for the Iced Rum Runner.

Once again, my thanks go out to everyone who took part in the Rallye and my crews of control point workers. Clarence and Kate Westberg, Kerry and Katherine Freund. Not to mention my wife Lorrie, who in addition to working a control has to do all the post event paperwork. Last but not least Ben Wedge who was wanting to learn how to work a Rallye and got to see first hand many issues as well as what could be seen as one of the worst case scenarios. I hope it hasn't put him off.

For a couple of days afterwards I was pretty low once what had happened had sunk in. It was one heck of a blow. But we're now making plans for the February Iced Rum Runner. We hope to see you then.

Prepping

Tschhhk, Tschhhk. Tschhhk, Tchhhk...
That's the sound of the printer down in the basement running off instructions for the Rum Runner Rallye in a few days.
All the hard work has been done. Plotting on the maps, going out for the leisurely drives  and checking the roads out. Then the route finalizing and measurement and then the pre-check.
It's been quite hectic.
The original plan was to have the event on the 4th, the Saturday but then the pressures of work took over and my employers instigated a mandatory overtime policy which not only moved the event to the Sunday but also curtailed any other road rally competition on our part as well.
(It also put me in the emergency room with a overwork related stress issue which wasn't very nice and caused me to miss the final pre-check but that's another story.)
Lets not forget that in the intervening we've also had a trip back to the UK and attended the Goodwood Revival.
Things have been so overwhelming that I'd even forgotten when I'd set the registration for the event to open. So imagine my surprise when I received an email notification telling me of the first entry for the event while we were on holiday in England!
So we're getting quite excited now. Right now I'm surrounded by delay forms, Tulips, waivers, General Instructions, and the event speciality. Fridge Magnets.
I think it's nice that everybody who runs gets something from the event. I'd like to get everyone T-shirts but not enough competitors get their entries in in time for me to get an order in to the printers. Fridge Magnets I can cope with at home. Though printing magnetic stock on a home inkjet printer can be fraught with "issues"...
Still, the fridge magnets are popular and I like to think that contestants take them home, stick them on their fridges and when a fellow rally competitor comes around for a beer to watch the game he sees the magnet and says.
"Rum Runner? Where's that one then?" He will then be told by his friend about the good time to be had on the Rum Runner and there you go, another potential entrant for next year.

The soon to be legendary Rum Runner 2014 Fridge Magnet.

That's how it should work anyway.

Now if you'll excuse me the printer has stopped running. There's some more papers to collate.