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 |
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 |
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 |
Thompson and Rosevear at Control 8 |
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.