The Slightly Longer Way Home Road RallyRESULTS
EVENT REPORT We hoped for a beautiful fall day. That wasn’t quite what we got. I planned the rally to coincide with the seventh Solo2 event of the FLR season. The basic idea was to try to entice solo competitors into trying rally on since the Solo2 season was winding down. The route was concepted to be a “simple” learning experience that started with basic course following and then added in rally timing once the instruction format was understood. I think it came across well since all competitors made it to the finish location and said they had a great time. The day was not the beautiful fall day we hoped for. Sean Caron (the event chair for the Solo2 on Sunday) was accommodating enough to schedule the Solo2 course setup a bit earlier so that anyone could come, help setup Sunday’s course, compete in the rally, and still get home early enough to get a good nights sleep or do final car prep for the Solo. The day was heavy overcast and made good on its threat of rain shortly after the Solo course was setup. Registration was managed with much of it huddled in the Solo trailer to keep dry. The rain did quit long enough to gather a driver’s meeting to explain how to play the game of Rally. Six teams showed up to compete. Tom & Deb Langdon, rally regulars, came out with one of their WRXs. George and Eileen Modlin ran the STS Focus, Andy and Michael Blake competed in the previously Solo Quattro, John and Brian Cass ran John’s WRX, Doug and Heidi Hall even brought their two girls out to enjoy the experience and be the added sets of eyes looking for clues, and Carl and Chip Dresie rounded out the field. The Rally consisted of two sections. The first portion taught course following, without having to worry about timing. The course meandered through Rochester and its suburbs using interesting roads that are not regularly traveled. Throughout this section of the rally, there were many questions to answer based upon signs, billboards, and objects along the route. Interestingly, I used two billboards for questions. They were there for the several weeks before the rally. Wouldn’t you know it, that during the week before the rally they changed BOTH of them! Luckily, I had put in the General Rules that not all questions would have answers. The second portion of the rally started once we got out of the populous Rochester area and was a more standard TSD (time – speed – distance) format. All of the routes had written directions and mileages at every turn, so there wasn’t much chance to take a wrong turn (even though I heard of a few extra excursions). Even though the day resulted in sporadic heavy rain, and poor visibility, all teams made it through the rally and did amazingly well. There were many more answers to the questions found than I expected and each correct answer gave that team a –10 points, so questions were very valuable. We ended up with three cars competing in Stock class and three in Novice. The stars of the rally were Doug and Heidi with answers to 37 of the possible 42 questions, along with incredible TSD scores. They ended up first in Stock class, followed by Tom and Deb and Carl and Chip. Novice class was equally well contested. John and Brian found 24 of the answers and only got 58 TSD points to take first in Novice, followed by Andy and Michael and George and Eileen. I would also like to thank the workers for this event; Debbi Segall did the course check, Bill Laitenberger and Debbi Segall worked a checkpoint, and my wife, Amy, worked a checkpoint. I managed registration and worked the final checkpoint. If you didn’t get a chance to come out and compete, please consider giving one of our remaining events a try. Rally is a ton of fun and a great way to spend the upcoming, cold winter! |