Not Just Another Friday Night

4/12/2010

NOTES from the Cascade Sports Car Club April Friday Nighter

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It started with intermittent, torrential rains, not unusual for April.  We huddled under the K-Mart awning for registration and the driver's meeting.  This rally started with a twist: the rally masters weren't present. But we had them on the phone. It was sort of like Victoria was a ventriloquist (on the phone) and Marinus was the... well, never mind. Bad analogy. How well did this RM-by-proxy work?  Marinus said to Victoria at the driver's meeting, 'They're all smiling'. And we were off.

Always count the instructions

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Ha, ha, ha, not falling for the 'you have 40 minutes to complete the next 16

instructions' trap. But we were so smug about seeing that, we blew past the

end of the odo calibration section.

The instruction read:

      End odo calibration TRANSIT at "DEER CREEK ELEMENTARY".  Proceed...

The conversation in the car went like this:

  "STOP! STOP THE CAR RIGHT NOW. BACK UP.  NO. BACK UP.  I don't care if

there are cars coming behind us. They'll get out of the way. This is the

second "DEER CREEK ELEMENTARY" sign.  It's the wrong one."

But we didn't back up, we just used the number we had. That meant our

correction factor would be a bit off... which might cost us a second or two

over the whole rally. It's a Saager-palooza.  We'd be lucky to not max all

the legs. What's a couple of seconds going to matter?

Ignorance is bliss

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Two DIYCs preceded the first manned checkpoint.  We didn't get the control

slips for those DIYCs until after instruction 38 of 50. So for the first

wonderful part of the rally, as far as we knew, we had perfect zeroes.

LEG 1: Yes, there really is a Suncrest

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"This NOTE is still active.  Have you seen Suncrest?  Why is it still

active? Did we miss it? Why are April and Marcus pulled over?  Why are Larry

and Rick pulled over?"  What would Brandon say? Just run your own rally.  My

feet are still cold from the driver's meeting, and my stomach hurts. We

missed Suncrest, and collected 41 points.

Why are they off course?

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For the 2008 season, we had number 7 for the season; the Zurschmeides had

number 6. Every time we saw them follow a different route from the one we

had chosen, we said aloud, 'Why are they off course?' ... Right; they

weren't off course. We pooched that season. 

So we came to the same intersection twice, from the same direction.  First

time we had this NRI:

      DIYC at "STOP" at UNGER. L. CAST 45.

Five instructions later, the instruction is slightly different: 

      DIYC at STOP. L at "UNGER". 

We do the DIYC. And we're about to turn left, but wait! Where is the

intersection?  Dang, the DIYC is at the intersection, not at the sign. We

circled around and pulled up next to the Zurschmeides, also pondering the

problem.  They went left, but we went right, and winced from habit. I'm not

saying they went off course, but someone went off course, and it wasn't us.

The Monte Zone

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In between those DIYCs, we entered the Monte Zone.  A simple little

intersection: a T with a turn pocket.  But miss it we did.  We went right

instead of left and collected a bucket full of points. And we've been

talking about the trap for a week.

The End

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The rally ended at the Cruise-In Diner.  It'll end there, too, for the July

Friday Nighter.  How did it turn out?

First Unlimited, with a score of 200, went to Poirier and Hale.

First Masters went to Levear and Trummel at 421. 

First SOP were LeFebvre and Vonk, with 420. 

First Novice was Lehman and Milner, with a score of 429. 

Where did we end up?  An ironic 201. Perhaps a couple of seconds do matter.

See you at the May Friday Nighter, hosted by Brandon Harer.

--

Renee Damm