Had it been a rally we would have won.

Last night, Tuesday, May 10th. Members of the TCRC met to do a pre-check for this Saturdays Intermarque social rally.
These social rallies as you know, are simple events put on for beginners to give them a taste of what road rally is like. This particular rally is put on in conjunction with the Intermarque "Spring Kick Off", the get together that informally marks the start of classic car driving season in Minnesota. So we have hopes of a good turn out of classic cars at this event.
Turn out for the pre-check was poor, (but how many cars do you need to run a pre-check anyway?) with only Clarence and Kate Westberg there with Lorrie and I to help out Rallymaster Dave Fuss and his wife Rachel.
Dave handed out the Route Instructions and a clock set to the time of the event on Saturday, so we didn't have to recalculate any of the timing instructions, and we were off. I decided to use my RallyTripMeter App, I'd used it on a recent trap rally and got on with it well then. There were too many CAST changes coming too quickly on this event to use the MSY App and with all the timings given on the instructions, it was easy enough to use this as an Odometer that I could reset just by touching the screen and read the time off the clock to get us around the course.
As we started off I was paying attention to the CASTs, calling times and counting down distances to turns, I was put in mind of a in car video I had seen from a regularity rally, with the co-driver calling speeds, distances and timings. We were not as efficient and skilled as this pair but I was working hard watching the clock, odometer and instructions.
"Half a mile to the turn, 50 seconds to get there..."
"Turn Right at Stop in 3... 2... 1..."
It was how we used to be when we first started out about 4 years ago. But a whole year and a half of not competing in any rallies had made us rusty with bad technique and this was the first time since that we had approached any level of efficiency.
Counting down to the timing control points was hard work. The only distance I'm any good at judging is 22 yards, the length of a cricket pitch.  So to see the control board a distance ahead and not know how far it away it was, only knowing the time you had left to get there, made for awkward instructions to the driver.
"See the control up there, you have 15 seconds to get there... 10... 5, 4, 3...  Faster. We're going to be late."
Twice we were three seconds late. However, we were on time once. That made us feel pretty good about ourselves. We still could get to controls on time.
The final control was different, we had no time given to get there, just a distance, 1.12 miles and a speed - 30mph. We needed to get there in...
in...
er...
Two minutes and a bit. As you know maths is not my strong point. If I had more mathematical ability then I could have worked it out. So my instructions to Lorrie were to get up to 30mph as quick as possible and hold it there, of course we needed to spend a little time over 30 mph to counteract the time we spent below 30.
Yeah, difficult to work out isn't? No surprise we turned up 9 seconds early. To be honest, I was very surprised we were that early. But as Lorrie said driving at 30mph is very difficult.
It had been great fun. I never cease to be amazed that there are good driving roads to be found in the Twin Cities suburbs. This short, hour long rally format is a lot of fun too. It's just too bad I can't compete on Saturday. It's going to be a lot of fun.
With that, we repaired to Dick's bar in Osseo for a drink and a review of the course. It was supposed to be a rally club meeting evening after all.
Later as we were leaving we were asked how we did.
'We came first in class." I joked. There was only two of us, and we're not in the same class as Clarence and Kate.
"How many points did you score?" We were pressed.
"A zero, two threes, and a nine. Fifteen." I replied.
Dave laughed. "You won!" He said.
Kate admitted that they'd been running their rally computer in hundredths of a minute and not whole seconds and had miscalculated at the last control.
Of course, It hadn't been a competitive rally. But you know what they say, "To finish first, first you have to finish". That was true tonight. So perhaps we'll win a proper rally soon.

A Beer run.

May 1st saw the running of the Escape to Wisconsin road rally. Starting at Point Douglas Park, just outside of Prescott, WI over the Mississippi in Minnesota, the route took in about 150 miles of Wisconsins finest driftless country roads before ending up at a nice little brewpub at Reads Landing back in Minnesota.

Fresh from our success at putting on the Nowthen Rally the previous week, we were looking forward to getting out and enjoying the roads.

This event saw the debut of TCRC member Louis Hardin as rally master, taking over the running of this event from Clarence Westberg. New blood brought a new start point and new roads for us to try.

The event was a control zone rally.  What's a Control Zone Rally? Well what happens in a control zone rally is that you are given a combination of Time, Speed, and/or Distance for a section of the rally and you have to use those factors to arrive at a control point on time.  It was something of a new format for us. Still, we thought we'd give it a go, it couldn't be any worse than doing a trap rally. I even downloaded an iPhone App specifically created for the purpose. The Control Zone App from MSYApps. The thing that appealed to me about this App was that the variables could be set by a nice clean slider display. See below.

The Slider display of the Control Zone App

 The main display is also nice and clean too. The displays are simple to read and are highlighted green if you are behind schedule, red if you are ahead. The route is traced on the map with a blue line as you proceed along the way. There's other features in there like recording splits, that I haven't used yet. We were just relying on it to get us to the end of the rally and hopefully post some low scores. We'll come to how it behaved in the rally later.

The Control Zone App main display

We arrived at Point Douglas Park nice and early to socialise but with a chill breeze blowing off the Mississippi chat was kept to a minimum.

A nice blue sky, but there was a chill breeze off the water.

The departure time came and off we went. At the first control we scored a 6! That was unheard of for us at this type of rally where scoring was to the hundredth of a minute, follow that with a 17 at the next control and we were feeling pretty good about ourselves. The new App must be having an effect! Then the wheels came off the wagon a bit. But not entirely our fault as an error had crept into the NRI's. The exact form of the error was not clear, I think a CAST had been missed off the instructions which resulted in us turning up to a control zone start at least 3 minutes late. Confusion reigned in our car through the next two zones, and in the end I felt it was easier to take the max points at the controls rather than mess around trying to work out how late we were and take the appropriate allowance., maths has never been my strong point. We were supposed to be out to enjoy ourselves, not get stressed out. The instructions were the same for everyone and others were discussing the missing CAST at the first break point so we didn't feel so bad as we set out on the next leg.
It was then that I started to have "issues" with the App. It was very hot in the car and my fingers were getting very sweaty and greasy, and consequently so did my iPhone screen. This became a real problem using the sliders to set the mileage, when my fingers were dry it was quite easy to set the mileage using the slider to get close and then fine tune it with the + and - buttons. But with greasy fingers on a greasy screen all that went out the window, just pressing too hard or lifting your finger off the screen could result in a change of as much as 10 miles. This put us late a couple of times and we posted a few scores in the hundreds before I realized what had happened and tried to give the screen (and my fingers) a real good cleaning and drying before I used it again. This seemed to work when I remembered to do it and we went back to posting some low (for us) scores of 7, 12 and 25. Which meant we were finishing off on a high note.
A word about the roads. They are some of the finest road rally roads that you will encounter. Winding roads that climb up steep hills to get out of river valleys and then wind their way around an undulating landscape before plunging down another switchback into a valley not unlike the one you just left, at times you feel like you are diving through someones front yard the way things are set up. To be honest, it's tough to get too much of this scenery and with all the trees starting to get leaves it was just great to drive through. Some of these twisty windy roads found me going into some kind of Stage rally co-driver mode to alert Lorrie as to how sharp the upcoming curves could be, "Very sharp left", "Hairpin right" as I studied the GPS screen as well as reading the NRI's. It was quite natural to me, and Lorrie certainly appreciated the heads up on what was approaching.
Another thing that should be known about Wisconsin State highways is that the State Troopers have a propensity for hiding and catching people speeding and we were saddened when we watched the car on the minute in front of us get pulled over. Getting a ticket was a disqualification in the rally, and it can be quite easy to get ticketed in Wisconsin on a sunny weekend.
As we headed to the finish we were quite happy. It had been a very nice drive through some great countryside, overall we'd had a good time. That to us is the most important thing.

Finish point, Reads Landing Brewpub.

There was still one last surprise for us. We had netted enough high scores to finish last and win the coveted Dead Last But Finished (DLBF) award. Some people might be quite disappointed at finishing dead last. Maybe we would have been if we hadn't enjoyed ourselves. But overall we'd had a really good time, so it didn't matter. Besides it's a darned good beer.

Dead Guy Ale. Very tasty.

All in all it was a good rally. Congratulations and appreciations go out to Rallymaster Louis and his crew. We look forward to Escape to Wisconsin next year.

Navigating Near Nowthen

Friday April 22nd, saw a new program of road rallies presented by the SCCA Land O Lakes region and the Twin City Rally Club, aimed squarely at newcomers to the sport. A series of short rallies of about 30 miles in length taking about an hour to complete that will introduce beginners to the different styles of rally to run. Tulip, Monte Carlo, Trap etc; each rally is being put on by a different member of the TCRC. Some club members are also using the program as an opportunity to learn how to put on a rally themselves.
The program was originally entitled "Friday night is rally night". But as one of the first two rallies in the program is on a Saturday afternoon the name probably won't stick.
It fell to yours truly to put on the first of the Rallies. I decided that I wouldn't do a rally based on the Tulip instructions that I am so familiar with. I'd use the opportunity to try something new myself. A map based course plotting rally.
Regular readers of this blog will remember that a while ago I wrote a post bemoaning the state of maps in the USA comparing them to the Ordnance survey maps in the UK. The US maps fared rather badly in that article.
Still, I wasn't put off by this. I looked on it as a challenge, and since then I've been studying the maps of the area as well as researching rally instructions from the UK and Europe hoping to find a way to combine the two. This new rally program gave me the perfect opportunity to see what I could do.
The only stipulation I had was that I had to start and end the rally in the Twin Cities metro area to minimize travel time for the entrants. I chose Elk River in the Northwest, as I am quite familiar with the area because I often go for a drive around there in my MGB, so I knew there were good roads to be found in the vicinity. With a route found it was then all down to working out instructions to get the cars around the course. All that should probably be the subject of a totally separate article.
So lets fast forward to Friday evening.
I arranged for registration to take place at the Starbucks in town, and when I explained to the manager what was going on, he very kindly donated a 2 gallon thermos of coffee for us to have before we headed out. The finish point, Northwoods Bar and Grill in Nowthen, was similarly accommodating. They had no problem fitting 30 people in on a Friday night when I called up that morning to double check. We really appreciate the co-operation shown by local businesses that enables us to put these events on. Otherwise we'd just be meeting up in parking lots. My wife and I were back in Starbucks the next day and the staff there said that it had been great to have a full shop on a Friday evening. I've also chatted with the manager in person and He's very happy to have the Rum Runner start there in the fall as well.
TCRC members had done a good job publicizing the event and this was rewarded in the fact that over half of the 13 entrants had not done a road rally before and only three had done more than one. The entrants and their vehicles were many and varied. George Quinn turned up in his 1964 Oldsmobile, Paula and Scott Liptak turned up in a minivan because Scott is wheelchair bound. As it was a rally several people turned up in their Subarus of course.

George Quinn and his 1964 Oldsmobile Dynamic 88

 Kerry Freund and his daughter Katherine are ready to head out.

Much of the registration was spent explaining to the newcomers what road rally was all about and handily there were enough experienced TCRC members there to do this on a one-to-one basis. Registration passed all too quickly, and shortly before people started to head out on the odo check, Lorrie and I headed out to set up the DIY controls that I had planned. Having unmanned controls meant that more people could run the event instead of working timing controls. The controls were simplicity themselves. A standard SCCA LOL checkpoint marker was placed on the side of the road and a post placed alongside with a bag of stickers pinned to it.

DIY control

Upon arriving at the control, the co driver would get out, and put one of the stickers on their scorecard before heading on to the next control.

The DIY control in use.

We got all the controls in place and headed to the final control location to await the arrival of car zero, when, much to our surprise we met car 1 waiting on the roadside a discrete distance from the final control.
"What on earth are you doing here?" I asked.
"Well, we thought we were on the right route, but we seem to have missed a control. We're a sticker short"
Of course they were a sticker short, they'd taken a wrong turn, cut off as many as 6 miles off the course, got ahead of us setting the course up and missed the final control completely.
As Rallymaster it wasn't really my place to tell them where they had gone wrong, but after some consultation with the final timing control crew they decided to go back and look for the missing control, they did have plenty of time after all. Amazingly they arrived back at the final control with the sticker in place just one second late!
Everyone completed the course, some people missed a sticker, and a few people were late to the final timing control but everyone had enjoyed themselves immensely as I was to find out when I asked people in the bar afterwards.

Everyone having a good time in the bar afterwards.

We did tally up the scores, although no prizes were given, as it was all about having a good time rather than the competition. There was one zero score, and from a pair of beginners too! Drew McLaughlin and Taylor Zenz in a Lincoln MKZ. A fine performance in not your typical road rally vehicle.
If we have to talk about the get together at the bar afterwards, then we have to talk about the one bad moment of the evening. Well, it was bad for me.
The bar had booked a singer for the night, and as was his wont he liked to involve the audience in his songs, and we, being large group of people naturally drew his attention, and he gravitated towards us to find someone to accompany him on some of his songs. Somehow, everyone else there decided that it should be me that would go up there and play the cowbell on a couple of songs.
I hate cowbell. I think that the Saturday Night Live sketch "More Cowbell" featuring Christopher Walken is one of the least funny things in the history of television comedy. Still, I gritted my teeth and clanged my way through "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" and "Honky Tonk Woman",  everyone else enjoyed it so that was OK with me.
The event had been a success across the board. The newcomers had enjoyed themselves and discovered something new. They all said they'd had a good time and would do another one. The concept was well received too, so much so that I was told that if I wanted to run the Rum Runner along these lines I should. There's a big difference though, between putting together a 30 mile hour long route like that and a 100 mile plus afternoon adventure. Still it's something to bear in mind.
In closing, I have to thank Clarence and Kate Westberg, Dave and Rachel Fuss for working start and finish controls. Clarence also provided the pictures for this post. Last but not least my wife Lorrie for working registration and doing all the associated paperwork.
"See you next month." Said one cheery soul as they left the Northwoods bar. I certainly hope we do.

Breaking (down) Bad

Saturday February 27th was the day of the Lucas Flamethrower rally, one of the longest running, if not the longest running road rallies in Minnesota. Set on the gravel roads around the Mississippi River city of Red Wing, this is prime road rally country. We had volunteered on this one before and decided that this time we'd like to run it. Winter tyres are pretty much a prerequisite for this event, given the time of year and the type of roads. But this winter has been unseasonably warm, so we figured that Winter tyres were not as important. Sixty degree temps are a sure fire way to accelerate the wear on your winter tyres. So we felt good about running on all seasons.

It was not to be a good day.

We hadn't run in a rally of any sort since last summers Coolee Classic, so we were feeling like novices all over again. But as I now also occupy the co-drivers seat in a stage rally car I was looking forward to getting some practice reading Tulip instructions and using some new rally computer software I had ready for our next stage rally.
Our Rallymaster turned up a bit late so instead of having 45 minutes to an hour to review the instructions we had about 35 to 40 minutes.
This Rally was a Monte Carlo style rally and we had to calculate our average speed from the instructions so that we could know when to arrive at the timing control. I have trouble doing mathematical calculations of any sort at the best of times, (I suspect that I may have some form of dyscalculia) and having to do them in less time than expected was something of a stressor and we headed out on the Odometer check with only half of the calculations done, the generals only partly read, and without the ARM Rally Computer programmed, so I set up RallyTripMeter instead, which is a much easier program to use. Something that helped to calm me down and we went through the odo check with no problems. It felt good to be reading Tulips and following the instructions. We were feeling very good as we waited at the start of the first leg.
We headed away, rounded the first corner and headed to the second, an easy right hander.
"Woah." Said Lorrie in the drivers seat. We slid into the second corner just a bit, and the fifth, sixth... and others as we headed up the hill, some because the road was muddy, some because in the sheltered corners there was still ice there. We climbed to the top of the hill and the roads dried out. So much so, that in places the cars were kicking up dust. We headed down into another valley and the roads got wetter and icier and slippy again. It was somewhere along here that I started to have some kind of panic attack. It started out just be getting plain nervous as we approached corners. This was relatively easy to cope with, my heart rate was getting elevated and I'd squirm in my seat a bit as we went around the corners. This was just some adrenalin kicking in I thought, it'll pass. I could live with this.
We were passed by the car running behind us, so we knew we weren't pushing things and consequently we came into the first control approaching 3 minutes off the pace.
We set off on the second leg running out of order, which had its advantages. We followed (at a safe distance) two cars in front of us. The ease with which both the cars navigated the twists and turns in the road showed that we had little to fear from the conditions and we ended up coming into the second control only a few seconds late. I was definitely still "on edge", but we were back running where we should have been.
I was beginning to feel like I could cope as we started the third leg. But that didn't last very long as we didn't have the experts in front to assure us I started to descend into panic.
I started to feel every little slip and slide, perhaps I was even feeling some that weren't there.
I started feeling like every speed we were doing was too fast, every time Lorrie braked I felt the brakes wouldn't stop us. It was as if were were driving on sheet ice on slick tyres, no matter what surface we were on. The fact that the car did slow, and we did make it around the corners with no problem was doubly confusing. I fought it for a while.
"I can get through this, the roads look fine. I'm just imagining things. We've driven on far worse roads with no problems."
Then the really irrational thoughts started.

"What happens when we slide off the road and down that hill and crash the car? It's OK in the Rally Car it's built to deal with crashes. This is just our car. We won't be able to get to work on Monday."
I remember how many of my thoughts centered on how Blue the car is.
"I don't want us to crash our Blue car."
It wasn't just having an accident in the car. It was having an accident in the Blue car. I became obsessed with the Blue car.
It was getting towards dark and our headlights started to become noticeable as they swept across the landscape in front of us.
I still believed that I could get through this, but as we crested a rise and rounded a corner the headlights illuminated a point maybe 50 yards ahead of us, yet it seemed it to me like there was nothing directly in front but a black void. I knew we had to stop. Before things got really bad.
I couldn't process what I was seeing, I couldn't tell left from right looking at the route instructions. We pulled over and put the hazard warning lights on. With the stimuli of watching the road and reading the instructions gone I could begin to calm myself down and rein in everything. A couple of vehicles checked on us by the side of the road. Everything was relatively fine. I had stopped before things really escalated. Admittedly it probably wasn't much before that moment, tut having taken time to calm down, and waited for the sweep car to pass and report our pulling out of the event, we could set the GPS to the hotel and head back. It was a good job that the GPS was handling things as once we started off, things started to come back. The not believing the car would stop, not being able to tell left from right. It was a long painful 10 miles or so back to the sanctuary of our room.
It can take several hours for a panic attack to subside so things weren't over when I got into the room.  I'd crawl up in a ball, pace around the room endlessly, try to sleep. Listen to some music or read to try and take my mind off things as well as running through some of the breathing and grounding exercises that I have used before. After a couple of hours in the room I felt like I might be able to make it to the end point to meet up with the other competitors. Conversation would surely help take my mind off things I thought, and it did. Everyone has fun stories to share of this or their previous events and hearing all those and all the laughter helped take my mind off things. People had even run off the road and had to be rescued by the sweep car, and they were fine.
Everyone had had a good time. The little sections of route that we saw were great, there was a couple of EPIC dips in the road on leg 3 that I recall vividly, almost fondly. I'd like to run the route in the summer when we wouldn't have to worry about ice and other adverse conditions. Ed Solstad puts on a great rally on these roads, and I expect we will return in the future.
It would be a very easy cop out to say that if we'd had winter tyres on our car then this wouldn't have happened. But that's not true. We don't know. That was just the final trigger. There are a lot of things going on in our daily lives that stress us and we don't realize. I myself will loose my job of 14 years at the end of March, and though I feel pretty good abut getting a new position somewhere else pretty quickly, work can be a constant source of stressful situations.
The fact that I didn't have time to do all the pre-rally calculations, that was a stressor. That I couldn't set up the rally computer as I wanted to another one, stressors were coming pretty rapidly that Saturday afternoon.
We could have had a close call with a deer and that could have set me off. Winter tyres would have made no difference there. Deer strikes have occurred on this event several times in the past, and as a matter of fact as we were on our slow, painful journey back to the hotel we did encounter a pair of deer crossing the road in front of us.
Why am I even posting this? It's hardly rally talk and probably isn't helping my recovery, as I still feel a little disjointed, calling up all the memories. The little detail of obsessing about the blue car, I didn't realize that until I started to think about it as I was writing this. Perhaps someone will understand this, share the story around and someone who needs it will read it and take something from it.
That'll be fine by me.

Finding my way

Navigation. It's probably the most important part of Road Rally.

Sure, it takes some driving skill pull up at a timing control exactly on time. But if you aren't on the right road in the first place, then it's a moot point.

Now, the vast majority of the rallies that we have take part in have been simple course following rallies with basic Tulip or some other simple instruction to follow. We tried a trap rally once and hated it. Our brains just aren't wired to deal with cryptic, hidden clues that you have to decipher before calculating your route. 

That's not to say that I'm not interested in other sorts of rallies. I'm always on the look out for other ideas on ways to present rallies with regards to the next Rum Runner (whenever it is) and being of British heritage I look to the home country for ideas. In fact just the other week I came across some instructions for last years "Tour of Cheshire" road rally that involved quite a bit of map reading. I spent several hours on the site plotting the routes on the various legs from the instructions given (even though the correct route was overlaid on the maps).

Now I love maps and map reading. I always have done, right from a very early age. That might be one of the reasons I got into road rally in the first place. I even considered cartography as a career after leaving school. I find looking at maps (particularly the British Ordnance Survey maps) quite relaxing. So looking at these instructions quite naturally got me thinking about how to implement map reading into Rum Runner navigation instructions.

When it comes to maps we Brits are spoiled. Spoiled like you wouldn't believe. The Ordnance Survey have been producing maps since 1791, and these OS maps are wonderfully detailed and with one in your hand and a little basic knowledge it's not too difficult to find your way around some unfamiliar countryside.  

However, when it came to looking for maps of this quality to use for the Rum Runner, I quickly came up against a brick wall. For maps of OS standard just aren't easily available here. Sure there are US Topo maps but they don't carry anything like the level of detail that an OS map does.
Lets look at a few examples.

US Topo map

This is a US Topo map, downloadable for free from the USGS website. It's like some kind of hybrid satellite photo/map, and shows the end of the first half of the Rum Runner this year, (if you can see the road that is).  What good is a map for navigation if you can hardly see the road?

Another US Topo map

This second US Topo map has stripped away the photograph enabling you to see the contour lines and roads more clearly. But shows no other details. There are schools, churches, police stations disused rail lines and other things missing from this map that could be useful for navigation.

MNDoT Highways map

This is a Highways map from the Minnesota Department of Transportation, showing the end of the second half of the Rum Runner. Nice road detail is shown, marking different types of roads. But no other details. There are bars, churches and township halls in this area, all things that could be used to give a Rallymaster a opportunity to create interesting instructions.

An OS map sample.

This then is a much vaunted Ordnance Survey map. Where in the UK, I don't know, I just pulled a random image off the web. I expect it's Scotland, looking at the place names. Just look at the detail in the map. I can see there is a lot of pine forest, a railway line crosses the area from SW to NE as does an electric power line. A castle, phone box, and a church. So much detail for a Rallymaster to get their teeth into. For example, I have marked an A and B on the map. To get from A to B could be straightforward and easy. But let me add some extra instructions.
Use yellow and brown roads only.
Cross over the railway line.
Drive though SH 226 followed by 156. (SH is a "spot height" and is the elevation of a point above sea level you can see several marked on the map thusly .320 for example)
Cross over the railway line again.
This route would take you in a loop over the river up and down some steep hills, and around some sharp right angle bends before getting you to point B.
So much more fun than following Tulips, or any other instructions I think.
Perhaps there are maps of this level of detail available in the US, but I have yet to find them, and that's the great thing about OS maps. They are so easily available.
Lets say I go back to the UK and find out that the Mablethorpe and District Motor Club is putting on a road rally and I want to take part. I can pop into "The Paper Rack" (a small, independent local newsagent) on Seacroft Road and buy the maps I'll need in there it's that easy. If I want to buy maps like this in a store in the US I'd have to go to Outdoor lifestyle stores like Cabelas.
I think rallying could be so much more fun with maps like Ordnance Survey maps to work with.

Running with the big boys.

I think I have told you before of my liking for stage rally, of my wanting to sit in the navigators seat screaming instructions to my driver as we speed down a forest track to a winning time on a stage. Well this weekend I kind of got an insight as to what that would be like.
But more of that later...
This weekend was the Ojibwe Forest Rally up in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota (hereafter referred to as DL), a round of the RallyAmerica national championship. I had thought about volunteering to help before in previous years, lured in by the thought of standing feet from the cars as they zipped through the forests getting views other spectators don't. But vacation and work schedules had stopped me, much to my annoyance and disappointment. But this year when an impassioned plea for volunteers went out Lorrie and I decided that we would help even though we could only work the Saturday.
It was a long, tiring drive up to DL after a hard day at work and we were even too tired to hit the hot tub at the hotel when we arrived. It was straight to bed to be up early to get to the Saturday morning meet up point somewhere in the middle of a forest...
When we awoke and got out to our car we figured we were in the right place when straight in front of us was the Nick Roberts Global Rally car transporter.

We must be in the right place then...

It was almost an hours drive up to the Bad Medicine Lake meet up point and we were one of the first to arrive, though the Subarus already parked there clued us in this was the place to be. A friendly group of people offered us donuts as we waited for the organizers to show up.
When the organizer, Joe Lipinski, arrived we were treated to a good natured, informal briefing about what we could expect to do and what was expected of us. We even got free T-shirts, Green for working  in the forest and a bright orange to work the "Subaru Street Stage" in DL that evening.
We were "unassigned workers" and would be given jobs by any stage captain that needed us. Most likely we would be guarding protected intersections on the trails to stop unauthorized access by the public. Somehow though, we didn't, for when we reported to stage Captain Barbara Steencken she asked if we and a couple of others would like to work the start of stage 8 & finish of stage 12!
Err...OK.
To be honest I was very nervous about this, as far as I was concerned this was some serious stuff, starting the competitors off on time and recording the finish times correctly. Supposing I made a mistake and recorded a time wrong and someone lost a place by .1 second?
I needn't have worried Barbara and Ed, her husband did such a great job of explaining the process to all four of us (we were all novices) that I felt quite confident and with Lorrie assigned the duties of logging in the cars at the stage start I was looking forward to playing "rock, paper scissors" with the others as to who was going to do the countdown to let the cars go.
Then things took a very strange turn sideways. For I had my camera bag open and ready in the hope that I'd still be able to grab some shots of the cars as they arrived and left. Barbara saw the contents and said.
"Oh. You've got a good camera. You can take the photos."
When it comes to an instruction like that, well I don't need twice telling. I love photography and if someone wants me to take photographs then that's what I'll do. No complaints.
I hid myself away in the undergrowth and waited for the action to start, and when it I clicked away merrily. You can find an album of my photos here on flickr.

Nick Roberts kicks up a little dirt as he leaves start 8.

The minutiae of the start preparations are not for this post, it would go on forever if it was. Once the pre-check vehicles had passed through everything was very quick. About 35 cars lined up and leaving at minute intervals meant that they were away in less than three quarters of an hour. The sweep vehicles came though and we were clear to move on to our next location. Finish 12.
To get to the location we had to drive along the same forest trail that the rally cars had just been running on. Their grippy tyres had really done a number on the trail, with grooves carved into the trail as they sought the best lines. We were bouncing along this all rather nervily at 30 mph or less. It was a sobering thought to think the rally cars had been doing comfortably twice that speed and more that in places. For a moment I had a re-think of my dream of being navigator in a rally car screaming down forest trails...
We arrived at our finish site and set up all the appropriate signs, and were assigned our duties (I was photographer again). Finish 12 was a cramped location and there wasn't a lot of places for a good angle. I was considering climbing a tree but there wasn't any suitable ones.
So we set up, had our lunch, and waited... and waited, and waited.
There was a problem further down the stage with some trees overhanging the course and the decision had been made to cut them back. All in all, it was a good hour long delay before the cars sped by for us to record the times. Waiting in the forest with little idea of what was going on was about the only downside to the day.

Eventual race winner David Higgins speeds through finish 12.

Having my camera was quite handy as in addition to the official recording sheet in the scoring car we had a backup sheet at the stage finish line and I would photograph each car as it came through to confirm its number with the timer. This was pretty invaluable as the "big boys" sped past in a blur, I think I corrected the car number once. It wasn't so important for the less powerful two wheel drive cars as they went through. Still, I felt I was contributing using something I really enjoy doing.
You may well be familiar with the famous saying. "If a tree falls in a forest and no one ids there to hear it, does it make a sound?"
What about "If a Rally car crashes in a forest and no one is there, does it make a sound?
Well the answer is a resounding "Yes". We were stood at the finish line waiting for the next car to arrive, we could hear a car speeding though the forest, accelerating and braking. Then we heard it stop   and frantically go into reverse, (you can tell from the sound believe me) before a strangely revving car limped over the finish line.

If a rally car crashes in a forest and no-one is there to hear it, does it make a sound...

With our work in the forest done, it was time to head back to DL to man the Subaru Street stage.
Things were quite hectic as our caravan of stage workers arrived minutes before the start and our team of workers were scattered all over the stage. Our two colleagues who had been working the stage 8 start were accorded the honor of starting the final stage, Barbara and Ed worked the finish timing. Lorrie and I were called on to be marshals at the two chicanes. What was really special about this for us was that we ended up driving the street stage! Along the lake front in DL, under the Red Bull arch in front of thousands of spectators. I would be lying if I said that I didn't gun our car just a little bit at one point. That really made my day. Marshaling was pretty cool too, there was a lot of people along the stage who had no idea what they were watching, some people thinking they were watching a street race, so time was spent explaining what was going on and what had happened over the two days. The street stage in the daylight was cool to watch but at night, under the street lights was quite special.

Night time on the Subaru Street stage

So that was it. With the last cars finishing the street stage we retired to the DL pavilion to watch the presentation and get sprayed with champagne from the victors before heading inside for a well deserved meal. Volunteers are well looked after.

Victory celebrations 

So, was attending a rally everything I thought it would be? Yes, without a doubt. To be stood feet from a car as it sped past was quite exhilarating. That's the great thing about rallying is the proximity of the spectators to the action. The cars are something else as well, to hear the turbo's whining as the cars accelerate and chattering as the cars slow, it's amazing. If you have a love for cars you probably should try to volunteer at a rally.
In closing this post. I want to thank everyone we worked with. We were made to feel very welcome every step of the way. Drivers always acknowledge the stage workers for they know without them there wouldn't be a rally. It was a great experience to be part of such a cool event,  and we definitely hope to be back next year.

Rally Club

I've written before about the great camaraderie amongst my fellow Twin Cities Rally Club members, and the great fun we have at events and the Rally Club meetings. 

The TCRC has been around since the 1970's and was just one of the auto groups in the Minneapolis metropolitan area putting on Road Rallies. The University of Minnesota and 3M were just two places that had active road rally programs. But students left the University, people left their jobs, left the area and soon it was just the TCRC which gradually evolved into the social club it had become with rallies being sanctioned by the SCCA.

Recently the TCRC has reappeared on the scene to become more than a social club. Disquiet over the amount of money paid to the SCCA and perceived lack of return for what a person pays out, (next to no coverage in Sports Car magazine is a prime example). The TCRC has reached out to the Metropolitan Council of Auto Clubs to put on road rallies under their auspices. A move that has been welcomed by the "Met Council".

But I digress a bit. 

The meetings take place on the second Tuesday of the month, most frequently at a Green Mill Pizza restaurant in the SW Twin Cities, we've tried other places but keep coming back here. We've been there often enough to be members of the loyalty program and the "beer club". We aways get the same waitress, and she is quite capable of competing with the jolly, good-natured badinage that goes on amongst us.  Attendance generally runs to about a dozen folks, and this number can rise quite steeply in the summer months. In the past, evenings had been full of jolly banter about varied subjects like great rallies of the past. What are the SCCA doing for us? Even questions on how to use that old, old piece of rally gear you found on eBay. We've discussed and been shown how to use Rallye Tables as well as Stevens Wheels. 

But now we are once again an "official" club we have proper club business to discuss and have to a have a short formal meeting before getting back to the socializing. New members are always welcomed into our midst. I well remember the first time Lorrie and I went to a meeting. We were both definitely a little nervous about meeting all these people but clearly those worries were unfounded. Our group is a great mix of people of all ages and backgrounds and interests in motorsport.  Road racers and stage rallyists come along and join in the fun.

If a newbie turns up advice is freely given on how to take part in varying types of rallies that might be coming up, some people even actually turn up to the events! his is good, it means that they weren't to overwhelmed by the explanations of CAST's, the difference between "ONTO" and "ON" and myriad  Rallye terms. 

The meeting in full swing

Clarence Westberg explaining map reading for an upcoming
Rallye to new members Larry and Cindy Walter

Rally Club meetings are an essential part of being a member of the club, and if your local group of Road Rallyists doesn't meet up like this you probably should.

Monte Carlo or bust

The Monte Carlo Rallye is in the news currently with the official and Historic versions of the event having recently take, or are taking place as I publish this.
As is my wont, I often Google subjects when they are in the news to see what I can find out about them. Historical tidbits and what have you, something that I might be able to drop into a conversation to either impress or bore someone (there are times when one or the other can be desirable). My Google search for the Monte revealed this nice set of stamps, commemorating the 27th running of the Rallye in 1958. The stamps had been sold but they are still rather nice to look at and I decided to investigate the 1958 running of the Monte Carlo Rallye. As it happens, my research revealed some interesting facts and stories.

The race had not been run the previous year due to the Suez Canal crisis in Egypt. Fuel shortages meant that fuel coupons could not be issued to the competitors. This meant the 1958 running was eagerly anticipated in the Rallye world, and a large field entered. This year also featured an important change in the running of the event. Prior to 1957 a feature of the last day of the rally was a range of automotive tests (a gymkhana) run on the waterfront in Monaco. This year that feature was dropped so that speed and timing alone would decide the victor.

The winners were Guy Monraisse and Jacques Feret in their Renault Alpine, from A. Gacon and L. Borsa in their Alfa Romeo Giulietta. Monraisse and Feret were privateers with no works backing, so their win was a remarkable achievement, even more so when you consider there was an exceptional snowfall on the first night of the rallye which meant that many drivers crashed out or abandoned. 

How bad was this snow? Only one car made it from Paris through to Monte Carlo on the concentration run. English Rally driving great Pat Moss' brush with the 1958 Monte was described in her biography "Harnessing Horsepower." This years Rallye was the first in which studded tyres were allowed to be used. Clearly this didn't help many of the entrants.

The two victors, being residents of the area of the rally, used their local knowledge of the roads to good effect in their victory. In one final twist the pairing didn't run as a conventional driver/navigator pairing but shared the duties equally. To prove the win wasn't a fluke, later in the year they also went on to win the Tour de Corse (Corsica Rally) in the same car which was later presented to Prince Ranier and now resides in the Monte Carlo "Top Cars" museum. 

There you go, a little Monte Carlo Rally history lesson just from a set of stamps.

Alcan 5000

Moss Motoring magazine is a handy publication from the sellers of parts for you little British Sports car. This current issue, numbered 1 for 2015 is of interest to the Road Rallye enthusiast. It is dominated by a warts and all write up on participation in the 2014 Alcan 5000 in a Triumph TR4.

The Alcan 5000 is a road Rallye that starts in the Seattle area driving through Canada finishing in Alaska. A Rallye of long transits between timed to the second TSD stages. The road conditions vary from fast straight Tarmac, through speedy gravel roads to pothole strewn switchbacks. Much local wildlife like Bears and Caribou and suchlike can be encountered.

As I stated this is a "warts and all" article. You read about when the head gasket blows. When the navigator is scared by encounters with cows, you know about it. Plus you do feel their relief and joy when they finish.

I was fascinated reading about the event. It might be fun to take part. Now to persuade my navigator.

You can read all about the event and enter it at http://www.alcan5000.com.

Time to turn to the tables.

Sometimes I wonder why I'm so fascinated by the sport of road rally. There's a lot of maths involved and mathematics and I do not get along terribly well. Is seven multiplied by eight 48 or 56? I'm having to count it out in my head right now, and now confirm it on a calculator 7 x 8 is 56. So, how does a mathematical nincompoop like myself cope with this? (Apart, of course from turning the calculating over to the navigator). If you are like me then fear not for these below are here to save you.

Larry Reid's Rally Tables on my dining room table...

These tables do all the hard work for you. I suppose it's not dissimilar to using the logarithm tables that we used to have in school. (Log tables and slide rules? It's getting just like school maths class.)

The book is a plethora of numbers and rallye calculations already worked out for you.

The riveting chapters include: Hundredths of minutes converted to seconds. Seconds converted to decimal parts of minutes. Miles per hour converted to seconds per mile and minutes per mile. But the biggest proportion of the book is given over to the Navigation Tables. Some 89 pages of tables where each speed between 12 and 59.75 mph is listed in tenth of a mile per hour increments along with the time it takes to cover a distance between 1 and 40 miles. 

About as interesting as watching paint dry to the uninitiated, but bread and butter stuff for the Rallyist. Three miles at 23 mph? 7 minutes 50 seconds. 

In the past, having these facts easy to hand must have been quite helpful to a navigator if they were trying to look out for landmarks and follow Rallye instructions while at the same time being bombarded with requests from the driver about their speed and progress. 
Also, you needn't go thinking that modern high tech equipment has replaced them. For one of the first things I was shown on my first Rallye, by a friendly fellow rallyist, and was advised to buy, was a set of Navigation tables on an iPad.

There you go, more Rallye fun, and more maths. I really should have paid more attention at school...

An old rule for a new rallyist

This is probably one of those posts that will be of interest to those friends of mine who don't road rally and are curious as to what makes it such a fascination for me (and my wife). For you more experienced rallyists the article might illicit a wry smile or two.

The road rally world of today is driven by expensive computers. Big black boxes that sit on the dashboard and tell you how fast/slow you're going in relation to your actual time, how far you've gone/got to go, even counting your time to the perfect arrival time. Even now though these big black boxes are being replaced by iPad apps that do exactly the same for 5% of the price. So it's fun to think back the old days and see what rallyists used then.

This is one of those pieces of equipment. A Stevens Rally Indicator or Stevens Wheel. 

It's basically a circular slide rule. They came in two sizes 6" diameter and 10". This is the six inch version. The ten inch was more popular because of the larger size meant larger, easier to read numbers, especially at night. 

What I'm doing with a slide rule I don't know after my brushes with them in school. I can well remember having a small circular slide rule, when everyone else had a straight rule. 

"So Holmes." Said Rob Morton, maths teacher at Queen Elizabeths Grammar School Alford. " A circular slide rule. Whats three multiplied by two?"

I diligently set to rotating the wheels and sliders to do the calculation.

"Six" I said proudly, having  worked quite hard to get the calculation right. 

"Well done." The teacher said. To this day I'm not entirely sure if he was taking the Mickey or not. I think I heard a few giggles go around the classroom. 

So, how does this disc of plastic work for the rallyist?

As you see, there are three arms. The large one is marked T the two smaller ones E and M. 

When you go out on a rally the first thing you do is check how accurate your cars odometer is compared to the rally official distance on a special "Odo Check" section. This is what the E and M arms are for. At the end of this stage you set the M arm to read the official miles and the E arm to what your cars odometer reads. This takes care any measuring errors. Now set the T arm to the speed for the section of the rally you're ready. In this picture it's set at 43mph. A somewhat brisk pace.

Right, let's say you need to know how long it's going to take you to drive 11miles at the 43mph pace. You move the E arm to 11 and then read off the T arm. It says 19.8 minutes. Point eight minutes? You sound confused. Don't forget you also have the Galco hundredths reading stopwatch from a few posts ago. That's what you'll be using to time the leg.

Easy.

Now let's say you need to know how far you've gone in a certain time. You set the T arm to the amount of time that has passed. Let's say 11 minutes. Then if you look at the reading on the smaller E arm you see it says 6.45. You've travelled 6.45 miles! Calculations like this are the bread and butter of road rally, and I know of contestants who, in this world of the high tech black boxes I referred to at the start of this piece, still use the Stevens Wheel today to great effect. Road Rally is a sport that doesn't have to be run using the highest of tech.

To me it's just a bit of a novelty thing to have at the moment. It would though, be rather fun to compete in a road rally using one. 

After my first brushes with the slide rule at school all those years ago, I never thought I'd buy another one let alone consider using one.

How I went from my first Road Rally to Rallymaster in 12 months. (part 1)

On September 28th 2013, I was stood at timing control one watching the first car arrive, and get timed on the first Rum Runner Road Rallye. I have to admit to feeling somewhat pleased with myself. After all. I had only been road rallying a year and here I was, my first road rally as Rallymaster. I glowed internally with pride for a few seconds and then got in my car and zipped off to check on the other control point workers.

It was, indeed, exactly 12 months to the day since my wife and I had competed in the Coulee Classic Road Rally, and we were immediately taken with the sport. I’ve always loved driving around, discovering new roads and new scenery, not knowing what was around the next corner. The family Sunday afternoon drive was a staple of growing up. I’m lucky that my wife, Lorrie also enjoys getting out and about enjoying the countryside. The fact that there is a type of motorsport out there where one can drive around on new roads not knowing what’s around the next corner was for me, too good to be true.

Everyone was so friendly and welcoming at that event, making us feel a part of the crowd that I quickly joined up with the Twin City Road Rally club, and attended the monthly meetings which were really just an excuse for a drink, good meal and a natter. Being in with the club we learned more about what to do and competed in a few more road rallies in the midwest. But for us, living North of Minneapolis it was never a short drive for us to get to an event. Ninety minutes was the shortest drive I think, more than two hours was regular. I started to figure that the only way to get an event that I would have a shorter drive to would be to put one on myself. I dropped this nugget into a TC Rally Club Facebook conversation one day and before I knew it the next rally club meeting was devoted to how to put on a road rally. Lorrie and I were the only others who turned up, so we got a lot of one-to-one advice. So much information was thrown at us it was just a blur at times. Much of this we’d pick up later as things progressed.

First thing was to join the SCCA, the governing body. You have to be an SCCA member to get the event sanctioned and insured, in case of any mishaps. So I sent in a family membership for Lorrie and I. 

“Why did you do that?” I was asked when I presented her with her membership card. I explained it was no more expensive as a family than for me as a single. Besides, if we were to put on a Road Rally it might be more advantageous for both of us to be members. You, dear reader, should note this apparent lack of enthusiasm with scenes I shall relate that occurred a few months down the road.

So, in my spare time I would go for drives around Princeton looking out potential rally roads and started to read old rallye books for ideas looking at how things were done in the olden days, what I’ve read in these books has definitely shaped how the Rum Runner series of events are developing. 

When I started out I had no idea what made a “good rally road”. We’ve driven on some wonderful scenic roads in Southern Minnesota and Wisconsin, along the Mississippi river and close by on the rallies we’ve taken part in. But there was nothing like that around Princeton. Then as I was driving round I began to realize that if I’m enjoying driving the section of road then surely rallye entrants would enjoy them too. Sure enough, interesting fun bits of road began to manifest themselves. Using iPad Apps like Google Earth and Pocket Earth along with RallyTracks on my iPhone plotting a Rallye route became quite easy, and I soon ended up with a course that I thought people might enjoy. 

Then it became time to get a second opinion. I took Lorrie out on the course to see what she thought. At this point we still only had no more than four rallies under our belts, but we knew what we liked.

As we cruised around the course Lorrie started to share her opinions and I began to realize that her seeming lack of interest of a few months previous had disappeared. 

“Your checkpoint needs to be over there, around that corner. They won’t be able to see it as they approach from here.” 

“This is good. They might not even see the turn down to the checkpoint.”

Someone was clearly enjoying this road rally lark more than they were letting on. 

With that, we had a rallye. Now it was time to start organizing properly. Organising properly means paperwork.

But let's leave that for another day...

Our first Rallye.

It was only 18 months ago that my wife and I started out Road Rallying at the Coulee Classic in Wisconsin. What follows is the event report I wrote for the Intermarque Newsletter in November 2012. Hopefully it will give beginners a taste of what road rally can be like, and perhaps for those who were there it will rekindle some pleasant memories.
"On Saturday September 29th we entered the world of classic car regularity rallying at the Coulee Classic in Wisconsin. This is a report of how our day went.The event, put on by Auto Italia Minnesota was due to start in Maiden Rock, WI at 11am and as registration started at 10, we had to leave home at eight as it was a two-hour plus drive from Princeton. The drive there was a wholly unremarkable zip along the highways and interstates around the Twin Cities that didn't even get interesting until we got onto Hwy. 35 south of Prescott, apart that is, from zipping through the Lowry Hill Tunnel in Minneapolis, that kind of put me in mind of the tunnel on the Monaco Grand Prix circuit.
Once past Prescott we thought we were getting a taster of what the rally roads were going to be like, zipping up and down hills surrounded by trees changing color. The scenery and views here were great. We were later to find out this was nothing like the rally roads, more of that later. 
Arriving at Village Park in Maiden Rock we were greeted to the super sight of a line of bright shiny cars. Old classics and newer cars too. Modern Fiat 500's (no original Cinquicento's sadly) and an Alfa were the Italian marques on show. British cars were the most popular of the classics with a Healey 3000, two MG's (FG and an MGA) and a Triumph TR3 there. A 2CV was perhaps the most unusual car on view and a classic Porsche 356 the sweetest looking judging by the attention it was getting from passers by. Even FG was recognized by one competitor as the "self appointed most beautiful rubber nosed MGB in Minnesota". Which was gratifying as that means people do actually read what I put out here.
After the drivers briefing had finished, 11am arrived and we were all off! Traffic was stopped on Hwy 35 as we exited the park and headed south out of town, very cool. Technically the cars should have gone off at minute intervals and we should have waited until 11:12am as we were car number 12. But as this first leg was to set the cars odometer this was not an issue. It just lead to a string of cars waiting at a crossroads in the middle of nowhere to begin the rally instead of at the park in Maiden Rock. 
So, a quick word or two of explanation to those of you who don't know what a regularity rally is. A regularity rally is an event over a number of stages, some long, some short, here the aim is not to be the fastest but to be the nearest to a set time for each stage. If you match that time you get zero points. Faster or slower than that time, you get penalized. You are always penalized a positive point score. Not a negative score if you're faster and a positive score if slower. The winner is the person who has the lowest overall points score by the end of the event. Zero points would be perfect and is pretty difficult to achieve as you're penalized for being even .01 of a minute off. Setting the odometer like in the very first stage is important so that you know how accurate your odometer is in relation to the official race distances listed on the directions, showing where any turns and road junctions are on the stage. 
Another confusing thing for the first timer is that the timing is done on a decimal scale, i.e. half a minute is not recorded as 30 seconds but .50 minutes, 15 seconds become .25 minutes, etc. This helps with the scoring but it is quite an unusual sight to see an official timing device counting off the time like this the first time you see it.
At our next appointed start time we were off, feeling our way around the stages to start with. If we were close to our appointed finish time at the end of each stage it was more by luck than judgement. We quickly discovered that the scenery around the Wisconsin Coulee country was gorgeous, I mean really gorgeous and with the fall colors almost at peak it was extra beautiful. The Reds of the traditional Barns against a background of the yellows and oranges of the trees changing. All against a deep blue sky. At times it was difficult to concentrate on driving. Many times we wanted to stop and take pictures, but we also wanted to make the effort to have a good go at this "regularity rallying". Sadly on stage three we came across a fellow competitors AC Cobra by the side of the road. "No spark" came the reply when we stopped to ask how everything was.
After three stages we had a lunch break in Plum City. The sight of a dozen classics in the main street created some interest amongst the locals, one of whom had parked up in Main Street in his own classic car. A colossal yellow Chrysler Imperial. This thing was so big you could have fitted four MGB's in it. With lunch over we filled up with petrol and headed out. This was where we got confused. We had some issues following the instructions getting out of Plum City and we weren't the only ones. I think we lost one set of competitors in a yellow Honda for good there. Once out of Plum City we missed a road sign because it was obscured by corn stalks. A rookie mistake, experts would have been measuring the distances, (see above on the importance of setting your odometer). By the end of the stage we were some 14 minutes off our pace. We took a 14.50 minute delay as was our right to do. So we set off and set about recovering the 14 minutes we lost. We got through the rest of the stages OK but it looks like we should have kept taking delays through the other stages until the next break in Durand. But this aspect of the rallying wasn't clearly explained at the briefing for us newbies so we ended up gathering loads and loads of penalty points over the next couple of stages. Stage five gave us the pleasant sight of meeting about 10 Corvette owners of a club out for a drive. We shared a cheery wave with every one of them as we passed each other. The break in Durand was welcome as that got us back on schedule and gave us a chance to chat with some of the other competitors. With four more stages to go we were starting to grasp the concept of regularity rallying. Waiting until our appointed time to leave the stage start point and judging our arrival time to cross the finish. So much so that we logged two zero point stages in the last four stages of the race (as the marshall at one of the stage finishes said has he handed us our slip "You can't be better than that"). We were pretty pleased with ourselves there I can tell you. We were enjoying ourselves.
But that was it. The rally was over. So we headed over to the Stone Barn in Nelson, for some of their Artisan Pizza and turn in our score sheet for the final results.This was where things got really confusing for us beginners, for we didn't have to turn in our score sheets until we'd done all the calculations. Which was fine, we had a grasp of the maths behind the scoring. But not every finish Marshall had filled in his scoring slip in the same manner. We even ended up with two scoring slips numbered for stage seven. "Ask the more experienced rally-ers for help in doing the adding up" was the instruction. Fine. No problem. That way we got to know some other people and find out what nice folks they were. But even they had to scratch their heads in confusion when one scoring slip looked to me like we'd reached the finish of one stage 50 minutes before we were due to start it!
But with no results announced by 6:30pm we had to head home as we still had a two and a half hour drive ahead of us to get back home. However many points we scored didn't matter. We knew we weren't going to trouble the prize winners, except perhaps, the prize for finishing last. But we really enjoyed the event and would do it again. It was pretty much 9pm when we arrived back in Princeton tired and worn out. Nine hours and some 400 miles. FG the MGB had purred along the whole way. What a wonderful car it is. It deserves a special washing and waxing after that. 
A thanks to the organizers for putting the race on, especially the stage finish marshals who found themselves waiting a rather long time for us in the middle of the event there.
Perhaps we'll see you all again next year."