Crowdfund a Champion

I do like Rallying. If I'm honest, I secretly harbour a desire to sit in the navigators seat of a rally car calling the route instructions out to the driver as we negotiate forest tracks at high speeds.

"Seventy-five. Crest. One hundred. Easy right sharpens. Twenty. Hairpin left." As we speed to a fastest time on a stage. But what has that to do with anything? Well...

This pretty young lady is Louise Cook. Louise has a dream. That is to be the first Female World Rally Champion.
This isn't just an idle crazy dream, for Louise is actually quite good at Rallying. Scratch that, she's really very, very good at it.
In her first season in Rallying in the UK in 2010 she finished 10th in the National Championship and won the RC4 class. In her first season.
In 2011, She finished second overall in the Fiesta Sport Trophy in the UK and was female champion. That was her second season.
In 2012 she became the FIA WRC Production Car Cup Champion. The first female to win a non-female title. That would be in her third season, if you're counting.
Now Louise wants to compete in, and win the FIA World Rally Championship and be the first female to do that. Even competing in the WRC she would become the first woman since French legend Michele Mouton in 1982 to compete at the highest level in world Rallying.
But this takes money. Lots of money. Lots and lots of money.
Something Louise is well aware of. She has been promoting herself and her dream ceaselessly since then. Winning trophies and selling them, and then knocking on potential sponsors doors.
It's hard work. She's now turning to the "in thing" of crowdfunding so her fanbase and supporters can help her achieve her dream.
Over at her page at Idiegogo, she has outlined her dreams and plans and lined up some nice gifts for you should you decide to help her. You can spare twenty quid ( $31), can't you?
Her results so far would indicate that the dream is very achievable. You can help it become reality.
Louise will of course be over the moon when she wins the WRC for the first time. How good are you going to feel knowing you helped her?

Louise flying.

Coulee Classic plug

After the Spring Kick Off Rallye on Saturday a cheerful grey bearded fellow thrust some paper into my hand, uttering the phrase. "Take a flyer, take a flyer."

I was a little unsure as to what he meant. Did he want me to "go and take a running jump" (British, informal: a contemptuous expression of dismissal) or something else? 

Then I looked and saw that it was Ed Solstad. Rallymaster of the Coulee Classic, plugging his forthcoming event.

The Coulee Classic flyer. I highly recommend you go.

The Coulee Classic is a great run. Our first ever rally some three years ago was the Coulee Classic. Other commitments have meant that we haven't been able to attend the past two years, so I really do hope we can attend this time.
The scenery down in Wisconsin Coulee country is quite beautiful, the easy to follow instructions do make it a great rally for the beginner. You should probably go. You will have a great time.

Spring Kick off Rallye

Saturday May 16th was the date of the "Spring Kick off". The unofficial start to the classic car driving season in Minnesota and is marked with a great classic car show in the city of Osseo in the NW suburbs of the Twin Cities. 

The TCRC were charged with putting on a road rallye for those who attended the show to round off their day. A fun drive in the countryside, in your classic car with a modicum of competition what could be better?

There were between 70 and 100 cars at the show. I don’t know how many we expected to partake in the event. Between a dozen and 20 perhaps? 

In the end we were a little disappointed that only 6 cars turned up at the start. Three classics, a Porsche, a Citroen 2CV and a 1934 Ford Coupe, (American I know, but it sure looked good on the rallye). Then we had three modern cars. All to our great surprise, (and a little amusement) were Fiat 500’s.  

A couple of the entrants were new to Rallye, a couple were novices, and the last two teams were long time rallyists who hadn’t been seen out in the roads for the longest time.

Why didn’t we get more? I don’t know. Some of the folks I talked to at the show were just not interested, preferring to just have leisurely drives on their own, or with their chosen car club. To be honest though the weather forecast was not overly promising with threats of strong thunderstorms from about 2pm. Indeed, many of the car show entrants started to leave before then. I myself didn’t take my MGB along because of the forecast and the fact I am in dire need of replacing the soft top.

Still, as an advert for an allergy medication currently running on TV in the Twin Cities metro says. 

“Six is better than one”.

I was looking forward to working a control on this event and was given control one with Ben Wedge. The sylvan setting belies the fact that Co. 81(a busy suburban highway) was less than 100 yards to the left in the picture below.

Control One.

Being close to the start and only six cars running, our task was quickly done with the minimum of fuss. We did have two cars arrive out of order, which would affect the final standings as it turned out. we still had to deal with one person checking out what we were doing on a quiet country road stopping cars every minute. With only one control to work I headed over to the final control at the finish point to get pictures of the cars as they arrived.

Car 1. Erin & David Vrieze Daniels.

Car 2. Bill Heptig and Lorrie Bjorgan.

Car 3. Ed Solstad & Marisa Riviere.

Car 4. Michael Barone & Lise Schmidt.

Car 5. Scott and Kaitlyn Lebakken.

Car 6. Cyndi and Larry Walter.

With that we all retired inside to hand out prizes and relax.

With only six cars and 4 control points scoring was easy and quickly done. Which must've been good for the newbies as it's the scoring that I always find daunting after a long rallye.

Final results.

So, a comfortable win for the Frieze Daniels in modern, and a win for the '34 Ford Coupe of the Lebakkens in the classic class, though you can also see that aside from one high score coming out of place at control one the 2CV of Barone and Schmidt could have done very well. That really does prove that you can road rally in any car, be it a custom car or classic French "umbrella on four wheels".

Erin & David Vrieze Daniels were pleased with their 1st place.

A big thank you goes out to Dave Fuss, our Rallymaster for planning the event and the crew of control point workers, except me, it's rather self serving to thank myself.

In closing, lower numbers than we hoped for in entries, but everyone had a good time. We hope for more entries in next years event. After all, the Superbowl wasn't one of Americas largest television events straight away, now was it?

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.

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.

Trapped! Escape to Wisconsin Rally 2015 report.

Is working on novel, building literary muscle (5)
What on earth does a cryptic crossword clue have to do with road rally? I hear you asking.
On Sunday we took part in the Escape to Wisconsin rally. It's a rally we have taken part in before and we enjoy the roads through the Wisconsin farm country very much. In the past the rally instructions have been in Tulip style. An easy to understand format that contributes to our enjoyment of the event.
This year the format was to be different. It would be a more traditional "course following" event. Where reading the written instructions correctly and understanding the differences between turning ON a road and turning ONTO a road are paramount. We knew nothing of this type of rally so we were relishing the challenge.
But more of that later.
Nineteen cars took part in the event a good number of competitors. Two in the expert class, Four "Journeymen" (neither experts or rookies), the rest were beginners with less than three rallies to their names most of them were on their first event. We like the term journeymen it fits us to a tee.

Line up of cars at registration

Despite this being a new type of rally to us the different looking instructions weren't at all daunting, in fact they were very clearly laid out and easy to read. The unusually large amount of cars did cause some attention at the start of control zone 1. Nineteen cars parked on the side of the road caused some farm residents to come out and see what was going on. I don't think they talked to anyone and asked what was going on.
We set off at our appointed time with low expectations as we hadn't been out on a Rally since Summer Solstice last year. We didn't care about racking up a few points here and there we were just there to get some experience back, especially as scoring was to the hundredth of a minute.
We were most confused when at the first control we were given a slip of paper that we didn't understand. Was it some special instruction for the next stage that we weren't told about? No. It turns out it was telling us where the "trap" had been in the control zone. We were late at the second control because we had slowed a bit while working out what the slip was about. After that we got into a routine, scoring 9, 12, 11 and 16 to finish the first half. Those are good scores for us at any time. The roads were fun, the hillclimb out of Knapp, WI is a delight, the associated downhill afterwards like many of the downhills was a tad hairy with a lot of sand from the winter road treatments remaining on the slope.
Once again we visited Menomonie, a place with many memories for us. But, as with the last time we were there on the Summer Solstice rally, this was when our problems started and we developed our distaste for Trap rally instructions.
Control 9 was the one that started things off. What is known in the sport as a "Blackjack" trap. Basically this meant that as we drove past a road junction we could see the control, but in reality it had to be approached from another direction after having done a loop of a few extra few miles. Every car except the two experts made this mistake and scored a maximum. This part of the rally area is well known to me and it is something of a confusing triangle junction that can even cause befuddlement using Tulips, and having to wonder about "On" or "Onto" and other things and seeing the cars in front of us actually at the control made us make the turn in some kind of reflex reaction.
We were so annoyed with ourselves for being caught out we missed some instructions to get us to the rest stop at Elmwood. Luckily, we know the area and could find our way to the gas station in question with ease.
Elmwood brands itself as the UFO Capital of Wisconsin. I don't know about that, but strange things happened to us after visiting there. Our Emerald Time App defaulted to a UTC (Universal Time) with zero seconds display and the Rally Tracks Odometer locked up. So from then on we were flying blind, with no idea of time or distance. So we followed the route instructions the best we could, even now I'm not sure if we were on the correct route or not. I thought we were, explanation of the instructions afterwards would seem to indicate we weren't, even so I think we took an extra excursion on top of the possible one planned for in the instructions.
The one word instruction "Right" caused trouble for many of the entrants.
But apparently that's part of the fun of trap rallies.
Rallymasters will tell you that their rally has "easy" traps. That, as we English like to say is a load of cobblers. No trap is an easy trap, if a trap was truly easy then no-one would fall for it and there would be no point in it. Some traps are just less difficult than others and not every persons brain is wired the same. One set of instructions might be blindingly simple for one team yet may cause another one consternation and confusion.
And so we come to the crossword clue at the top of the post.
"Is working on novel, building literary muscle (5)"
The correct answer is "Sinew". Some people would struggle with that cryptic clue from one of last weeks Guardian newspaper crosswords, some would find it easy.
More people would cope with the clue "Tissue that connects muscle to bone (5)"
Other people would be happy picking out Sinew in a word search.
It's not a bad analogy. People who get enjoyment from Tulip style tour rallies can be likened to Word Search and Literal crossword types. Those who solve the cryptic crossword with ease are the Trap rally types.
Different horses for different courses that's all, and you can't please everyone all the time. It would be a lot of extra work for a Rally master to provide "course following" and "tour style" instructions for the same event.
Still, we tried and we learned. I doubt we will do another rally of this style.
A big vote of thanks as always goes out to Rallymaster Clarence Westberg, his wife Kate and their two daughters Liz and Gwen and her boyfriend for putting on and working the rally.

Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

"Sorry to see you've stopped your blog." A fellow competitor said to me at the Escape to Wisconsin Rally over the weekend.
I assured him, that I hadn't, it's just that my situation mean that I hadn't competed and as a result didn't have anything to write about.
Over the past year to eighteen months work had been very busy, with overtime piled on overtime, piled on overtime. I ended up visiting the ER with a stress related breakdown.
This changed a lot of things for me.
I find I don't like Mountain Dew anymore which might not be a bad thing.
Driving in the snow has become quite terrifying for me. The winter here in Minnesota was quite light this year. Even so during one snowstorm the day after Christmas, as we were coming home from the Twin Cities I was curled up in a ball in the passenger sear of the car with a hat pulled down over my eyes trying to shut out the conditions. So winter rallying was out. Will I be able to winter rally again? We'll have to see what happens next year.
Affecting this blog, my creative writing muse deserted me for a long time. I started a couple of blog posts but they never got finished.
But I've got to the end of this post so hopefully things are looking up now.
We love getting out on the road and meeting up with all our friends, So we hope to see you out there sometime soon.