Here in my car I feel safest of all...

Gary Numan, and it fits in perfectly with todays post.
The Nemadji trail Rally is less than a week away. I've spent my time busying myself learning how to read course notes and Dan has been working hard preparing the car.
I've been measured up to fit in the seat, yet I haven't actually sat in the seat while the car has been moving.
Until today, that is.
Today was shakedown day.
The chance to see if everything was working after the fitting of the limited slip differential, and more importantly, how I was going to cope with a car driving at speed on a gravel road.
But there were some other tasks to sort out before we could get out there. Principally the installation of the in car camera, after all, you all want to see how I cope out there don't you?
In car camera is actually a requirement on a national rally, not so at a regional level. But it's easy to see how invaluable they are to any crew, enabling them to see how well they work together; the co-driver calling the route and the driver following the instructions. After throwing some off the wall ideas out there that at one point involved a live stream we settled for a GoPro mounted behind the crew, like everyone else.
The other task was to adjust my safety harness.
But let's just stop there a moment and take a step back. To put the safety harness on you first have to get in the car.
You open the door and...

The door bar of the roll cage impedes my entry.

There's a bloody great big Red bar in the way! The door bar of the roll cage. All of a sudden a task you don't have to think about becomes difficult. Left foot first? Right foot first? The first time I got in the car I had no idea what to do. After a couple of visits to the car, getting in and out isn't that much of a problem anymore.
When you're only used to regular seat belts (or in the case of my Studebaker, lap belts) a six-point harness is a horse of a very different colour.  But after 20 minutes or so of loosening and tightening the straps in various combinations. I ended up tightly, but comfortably held in the seat.

Yours truly, well and truly strapped in.

It is a very different sensation being restrained by a six-point harness. You'd better make sure that anything you need is within arms length, because you can't lean forward to reach anything.
Now at last, the next task was to fire up the car and get out there.
For me, there wasn't any feeling of claustrophobia strapped into the seat surrounded by a heavy roll cage in a stripped out car interior devoid of carpets, stereos and other such luxuries you take for granted these days. Inside it was pretty noisy when we were accelerating and the experience did leave me with something of a pounding headache, but I'm assured that with crash helmets on during the event this background noise will barely be noticeable.
Driving on gravel roads and other loose surfaces, even after nearly 20 years in this country still makes me nervous. They are not something we have in England. So I'm always happy to turn those duties over to someone else. Some snowfalls in the days previous meant that there were slippery patches in the shaded parts of the roads, which would make me double nervous if I was at the wheel but Dan clearly knew what he was doing driving on gravel roads in these conditions and I felt very at ease with him in the driving seat. I once glanced up at the speedometer to see we were traveling at... let's just say we were going at a speed considerably faster than I'd ever consider driving on such a surface and I wasn't bothered. So I clearly trust him at the wheel of the car. Now all I have to do is get him to trust my instructions. That might take a while.

Car#958 after its shakedown run.

The next time I'll be in the car is but 6 days away as I write this. 
I'll be counting down. "5-4-3-2-1. Go. Three hundred. Right four tightens..."

We could jam in Joe's garage...

It's Dan's garage and we're working on the rally car not jammin' on a Stratocaster with a whammy bar. But it's my blog and I've already established a musical theme to the blog entries and I'll post whatever I jolly well like (besides, Joe's Garage is one of my all time favorite albums).
Being that this is amateur motorsport and in many cases the driver works on his car with help from friends, I figured I should offer to help, even though my automotive repair abilities are somewhat lacking. The day before I had been doing an oil change on my 1976 MGB and had drained the oil from the gearbox and refilled the sump and wondered why the oil level was ridiculously high before I realized my mistake.
So not exactly brimming with confidence after that episode I went round to Dans garage to see how I could make myself useful.
For those of you looking for a picture of car #958 here is the sight that greeted me that morning.

The car, ready to be worked on.

Up on jacks, wheels off, gearbox removed, all in preparation to fit a limited slip differential. The seat had also been removed ready for the task of lowering it so that I could sit in the car without banging my head on the roll cage.
I asked Dan how I could make myself useful.
"Well, I need to work on lowering your seat and fabricating the fixing bracket, you can break down the gearbox if you like."
"Break down the gear box? You do know what I did yesterday don't you?" I said, referring to my oil change escapades.
Dan laughed. "We have a full set of illustrated instructions, besides you know as much about dismantling a Mazda gearbox as I do. That's why we have the instructions."
The instructions seemed pretty easy to follow, so I donned my overalls and with a set of spanners and sockets, I set to undoing the myriad bolts on the gearbox casing. In the meantime sounds of cutting, grinding, and welding came from the other side of the garage.
A couple of times I would stop and be called over to test fit the seat but the gearbox breakdown was mostly a piece of cake and when the casing was finally removed all you can say is that it was a thing of beauty. Dan came over and studied it deeply.

A mechanical marvel.

With the gearbox opened and the counter shaft removed that was as good a place as any to stop for lunch, about three hours had flown by.
During the mornings work the mail had arrived with a package and a task for me that was special on a couple of levels.
I'd get to apply the names and flags.
My name and flag.
To me that was pretty serious.
You see, rally cars all over the world have the driver and co-driver names on them complete with a national flag. It's in the WRC and Rally America regulations. The WRC regulations (rule 19.1) state that the flag has to be the flag of your passport. The Rally America regulations (article 3.1 subsection B, number 2b) allow for competitors to display their state/home region flag alongside their name. 
My original decision had been to go with the flag of St. George against my name, but then when I saw Dan had the flag of Minnesota against his name on the car I thought it would be extremely neat to have the flag of my home county of Lincolnshire on there. So I read the rule book, it might cause a second look or two. But the flag of Lincolnshire would be legal.
On another level, I've spent about 16 years working in sign shops in England and America, and applying vinyl lettering was an everyday task so I was looking forward to seeing if I still had the technique.

I remembered how to apply vinyl lettering.

The co-drivers side. Things just became very, very real.

With the names on the car, the reality of what I'm going to do set in, I can sit in front of my computer going over course notes as much as I like, but there is an air of permanence when you see names on the side of things. Everyone can see that. I was a little speechless.
That was as good a place as any to stop the days work. The limited slip differential hadn't returned from the workshop, so that couldn't be fitted. We had done about as much as we could do for the day.
I had felt extremely useful and hadn't broken anything or spilled any fluids all over the garage floor, So that was a win. We had a car that I could sit in and had my name on the side, it had been a very good day.

(Hopefully not on a) Road to nowhere

I'll wager David Byrne and Talking Heads would be surprised to find their songs associated with a persons quest to be a stage rally co-driver.

Hopefully come December 5th I'll be good at my job and car #958 won't end up lost in a forest on a road to nowhere.
Our visit to the Little's was twofold. Firstly, as we've discussed, was to see how I would fit in the car. Secondly, was to get some co-driver instruction from Dan's wife, Susi.
Susi is an experienced co-driver herself, navigating for another local driver Paul Johansen, who had also joined us all for the evening to contribute extra sound advice from a drivers point of view. Susi had agreed to give me some pointers as to what a co-drivers job entails. This was an enlightenment in itself. 

If you think that a co-drivers job is just to sit in the seat and call the turns, you'd be very wrong. In a big pro team that might be the case. But on a small regional rally team, that could barely scratch the surface of the co-drivers tasks. It's probably more accurate to say that all the driver does is turn up and drive.
Everything from booking hotels, and supervising the submitting of entries, to making sure all the tools are packed and in the right place. All could fall under the perview of the co-driver. If Dan says he's going to order a "woofle sprocket for the hyperdrive" then it's my job to keep at him until said mysterious part is delivered, and that's the easy stuff.

On the day of the event a co-driver can be everything from Team manager to minder/babysitter for the driver.
Who is responsible for all the paperwork at registration?

The co-driver.

The car will have to go though the technical inspection. Who's going to make sure it gets there?

The co-driver.

Who's going to make sure the support crew knows how to get to the service point to work on the car in the service break?

The co-driver.

Who is going to make sure the driver goes to the bathroom?

NO.
Once I'd got over the shock of all that, it was on to the things that I knew about. Reading the course notes.
"Right four tightens, fifty, Left four over crest". If you've ever watched any Rally cockpit videos on YouTube or seen James Mays efforts in a Bentley on Top Gear. You'll know what it's about.
Quite why it's this element of the sport that interests me so I don't know. I think when I was first interested in the co-driving as a kid, the co-driver was more often referred to as the navigator, perhaps I thought there was a lot of map reading involved and I love looking at and reading maps. Once the truth was discovered I was certainly no less interested in the role.

I had become fairly conversant in the terms used in the course notes. I knew what "Left four tightens over crest" meant. So I was feeling pretty confident about this. But hold on there! Reading notes off a sheet of paper is one thing, relating those to what is happening on the road in front of you is another. That actual experience is going to have to wait until the day of the event, in the meantime Susi said that I should try reading course notes along with one of the many videos on YouTube.

Course notes for SS1 of the Ojibwe Forests Rally and Nick Roberts and Rhainnon Gelsomino cockpit video

Perhaps you think this would be easier than the real thing. But I think you'd be very much mistaken. Watching a cockpit video on a computer screen in two dimensions is different to the real world. Thirty yards can look a lot like fifty, it's difficult to make out a crest on the road on the screen. So a R4/Cr 30 can look a lot like a R4 50. There's no feedback from a rough road, you're not lurching around any corners feeling G-forces, you're sat in a comfy chair sipping a cup of tea. If you're not concentrating very hard you can easily get lost on the course notes. I've already spent many hours over the afternoons and evenings reading along with the road, struggling with it. I would quite literally blink and loose my place.
Then all of a sudden it clicked. I thought it was like learning lines for a play where the instructions and the turns became memorized. I thought that made sense. I started out by learning on a 2012 Nemadji trail Rally Stage 1 video which after nearly 20 viewings I had become familiar with. But then I tried following the corresponding stage 2 video which I ran all the way through the first time of watching having not seen it before. At all. So something was beginning to work somewhere along the line.
There we are then. I now know that there's much more to being a co-driver than I originally thought. A whole world I wasn't expecting when I signed up for this adventure. A world that should "the interview at Nemadji" be successful will present me with a whole new set of challenges.
I know what you're thinking.
"He's got this far and he's barely mentioned the car. When do we get to see the car?" That is all part of the plan and will wait for another entry.

You may say to yourself... My god! What Have I done?

"Hmm..." Muttered Dan Little, driver of the #958 Mazda MX-3 Rally car. "You'll be banging your head against the roll cage here...and there. Not unusual. The seat needs to come down about an inch, inch and a half that's all. I can cut a hole in the floor, drop the mountings and weld everything back up. No problem."
It's a Friday night and I'm actually being fitted to the co-drivers seat of a stage rally car.
In the immortal words of David Byrne and Talking Heads. "How did I get here?"
Well, about a month ago I received a Facebook message from fellow TCRC member and stage rally driver, Dan Little.

"So, having volunteered at Ojibwe, do you have any interest in co-driving in a stage rally?"
(I'm sure he had probably forgotten that a couple of times I've mentioned my dream of being a co-driver of a stage rally car in this blog.)
To me, this was not an opportunity to be missed. I looked on it as some kind of reward, a treat if you like, for the blog post on volunteering at Ojibwe. That post is now the most popular one on this blog, and very well received by the rally community in Minnesota. I never got invited back to the Goodwood Revival when that post was the most popular, so I thought this was Karma evening itself out.

We arranged a meeting and over some proper English cider and fish 'n' chips he explained the situation. He wasn't just looking for a co-driver for the upcoming rally but for the foreseeable future.
So, I could look on this as a "job interview". If I can cope, If Dan thinks I can cope, and we work well together, then the seat could very probably be mine.

Oh my giddy goodness.

Things very quickly took a whole new turn (L3/Cr, left three over crest in rally parlance). Getting the chance to experience something you dream of is one thing, to have the potential of turning that into something more permanent is a different kettle of fish altogether.

The first thing I had to do was get myself a Rally America co-drivers license. A task that is as simple as it says. Just fill in the form online, answer a medical questionnaire, send them some money and Bob's your Uncle! You are licensed. (Actually, the person in charge of licensing at Rally America is called Bob, but he's not my Uncle. That would be too much of a co-incidence).
With that, our entry into the Nemadji Trail Rally could become official.

There it is. All official as of Nov. 1st. Dan Little and Ian Holmes in Car #958.

As you can guess from the first lines of this post, we are a little way along from the official entry acceptance, but to cover everything would result in a huge unwieldy blog post, the very simple act of something as basic as actually getting into the car is worthy of mention. So you can be sure I'll be sharing more experiences in other blog posts as things develop and race day nears.

Rum Runner 2015

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

Gary Starr and Sharon Bringen

Brian Jacobson and Dave Fuss

Clarence and Kate Westberg

Mike Thompson and Fred Rosevear

The Gary Starr car approaches control 8

Tony and Kaitlyn Stamson near control 8

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

Happy smiling faces check their scores and tuck into their food

Swapping stories.

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

Trails and tours

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

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

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

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

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

A show of cars

Once again, a little diversion from the world of Rally as we head back into the world of historic car racing. Last year we were at the world famous Goodwood Revival. This year I found myself at the Lime Rock Historic Festival in Connecticut.

This was the 33rd running of this event, it is well established as a notable date in the worldwide historic racing calendar. Indeed, the guests of honour this year were Jochen Mass, German motor racing ace and one of the greatest names in the history of motor racing, Sir Stirling Moss. 

The event runs over five days of the Labor day weekend starting with a parade through the town on the Thursday followed by three days of racing and practice at the track and a Concours d'elegance car show on the Sunday. The Lime Rock Circuit is in a beautiful location surrounded by trees. Its shape and form remind me of the wonderful English circuit Cadwell Park.

We managed to attend the Mondays racing and the Sunday Concours. This post will be about the car show. I'll cover the racing later.

First of all let me say I don't "get" the Concours concept. I have said it before and I'll say it again. "The best way to look after an old car is to drive it."
The very best concours cars are in better condition than when they left the showroom. Judging a cars appearance is purely subjective. How one immaculate car can be deemed better than another is beyond me. There were many immaculate cars there in many different classes. All deserved to be overall winners. There was even a class for car in the condition "As the owner found them." So that a bit of a rust bucket could be displayed in completion against a mint antique automobile.
So for me this was just a chance to see some beautiful, and legendary cars.

Lets be honest, to the classic motor racing enthusiast there is no more legendary vehicle than the 1955 Mille Milgia winning Mercedes of Stirling Moss and David Jenkinson. It is a breathtakingly beauftiful car with its clean lines and striking silver colour, only broken by the bright red of the number 722. Just astounding.

The legendary Mercedes Benz #722

So to the cars on display. Mercedes were the guests of honour and there were several wonderful old cars there. Each pristine and amazing to see.

1914 Mercedes Grand Prix car

There were many pristine cars of all ages to see, from one of the very first electric cars to a Pagani Huyara 'hypercar'. Though all these cars caught my attention, I was particularly taken by a Tatra T87 Diplomat. A vehicle from Czechoslovakia built in the 1950's with a V8 air-cooled engine. Its streamlined shape was so sleek and eye catching. That car was my "best in show". But my opinion didn't count for much and the best in show went to the Count Trossi Mercedes SSK that had recently won the Pebble Beach concours. A car I thought so ugly I didn't even bother taking a picture of it. 

My "best in show" The Tatra diplomat

But Sunday at Lime Rock is about more than the showpiece cars, for the rest of the circuit is taken up with about 800 other cars from many different makers. "The Gathering of the Marques" they call it. The cars of everyday guys like me. MG's, Cobra's, Land Rovers, Alfa's, Corvettes, etcetera. All a joy to look at. Something I'd never heard of before called a Cisitalia caught my eye.

A Cisitalia. Unusually beautiful.

A Gogomobil that was raced by American Newsreading legend Walter Cronkite.  I didn't know Walter Cronkite liked to race cars let alone something as odd as a Gogomobil.

Walter Cronkite's racing Gogomobil.

I could go on and on abut things that caught my attention. I was most surprised when I looked at my watch after walking a 1.5 mile lap of the Lime Rock circuit to find we had been there over four hours.
It really was a great way to spend a day. It had been a very hot, long day there and we bought ourselves a Ben and Jerry's ice cream and headed off home, looking forward to the next days racing.