Sunday, June 7, 2009
  
More Lessons in Rallying
The Cascade Sports Car Club local Friday Night series has reached the halfway point so let's take a few minutes and look back at where we are and how we got here.  When I do, I'm always amazed at how things work out when it comes to the give and take of road rally.

For instance, on the first rally this season we found ourselves poorly prepared.  It was dark and we were well out of practice having not run competitively for the past few years.  We were quickly provided a couple of important lessons.

The First Lesson
First, it's important to be alert.  Since my wife is diabetic, it's important that she have something to eat at regular intervals or unusual things happen, few of them good.  Having not had time to eat prior to the event, she started getting "loopy" right away.  For instance, she caught all the CSD 1 and CSU1 notes but forgot to mention the pause notes so that when we'd arrive at the checkpoint on zero I'd have a whole pile of "mystery points".

Lesson one:  Feed the navigator before the event.

The Second Lesson
The first trap of the entire season was a spelling trap as part of an OR instruction.  Now hear me clearly here:

When you have an OR instruction there are only two realistic possibilities.  The first is that you have already made a course "decision" and the two halves of the OR merely route you around the course.  The second and most likely one is that the first part of the instruction that you find IS the trap.  Always.  My rally senses were tingling and should have been going off but for some reason they weren't.

Lesson two: Always check the first half of the OR very carefully.

We're all a little rusty.

In this case I did at least ask if it was spelled correctly and she told me it was.  It wasn't.

The points continued to pile up.

At the end of the night I was pressed into emergency rally master mode and told I had a few weeks to put together the next event.

Yes, I'm a Professional
I wrote the rally the next day.  At my desk.

I zipped off 5 legs, we ran through it and it was only 20 miles in length.  Perhaps a little short.  So we added two more legs and another 15 or so miles.  The result was a 7-leg rally filled with traps and an unusual alien abduction.  We liked it.  I even gave away the number switch at the drivers meeting only to sting them with another one right before it.

The feeling was coming back.

The Third Lesson
The May rally was a Russ and Katy rally on the other side of the river in Clark County, one of our favorite areas.  We did well, stayed on time, worked well together and did everything right.  Well, with the exception of watching for signs that were relevant but not on our road - my fault.  We missed a sign on the parallel freeway that gave us almost all our points.  A good trap.

Lesson three:  Look both ways when crossing the street.

As always, it's important to be alert and see everything.  Another lesson filed away.

Some Hard Lessons Learned
On the way to the June rally, we were running late.  Traffic was awful and it was clear we would be lucky to make the drivers meeting.

While driving down Division I suggested we stop anyway and grab a sandwich at Subway.  We were in and out in 5 minutes and Victoria was getting some food ahead of the long evening in the car.  She ate on the way to the start, I ate at the start while she got us registered.  Lesson one learned.

The first leg included an OR instruction.  The first half we encountered looked like an obvious turn to the left on Boones Ferry, except the sign actually read "BOONESFERRY".  No space, it was one word and not the "correct" sign.  We refused the turn much to Victoria's concern and my delight.  As always, the first half found WAS the trap.  Lesson two learned.

Continuing on to the CP, we came to a blackjack control at a straight-off.  The rally senses were now on full-tingle and I saw the back-facing Yield sign that forced us to the left.  I refused the control.  It was fast and furious for a few moments but once we got past that it was smooth sailing to the CP.  Our score was a 3.  I can live with that.

There was a NOTE in effect and this time we were on it.  The NOTE was a Pause at the "RXR" sign.  We refer to this as the Rixer.  And while traveling the route on the second leg we observed three Rixer's to our right on the sideroads for the tracks running parallel to our route.  We dutifully and observantly counted all three hoping the Rallymaster did too. 

They did but no one else did. 

Lesson three learned.

The Rixer points proved to be the deciding factor in our victory.  A fact I alluded to when we found the first one.  That we were able to win despite a 35 on the last leg was great but apparently there are still some lessons out there waiting to be learned.