By Alan Smith, Rallymaster

The 10th version of the Long Way Home was held on Jan. 10, 2009. Twenty teams gathered at the Yard of Ale in Piffard for the first event in the 2009 FLR Winter Challenge Series. Even though the weather added an element of excitement to the evening, I am pleased to report that all the teams made it through the event without any drama. The only reports of “interesting” tire tracks apparently came from a couple of the checkpoint crews, rather than the competing teams.

The weather for the rally started out pretty mild, but quickly shifted into a stead snowfall. It never became “blizzard like”, but had enough falling to make high beams useless through some sections and the view down the road was rarely as far as teams would have desired. I had driven the route on Friday evening, and most of the roads were generally snow packed/icy surface; conditions made us believe it would be a greasy event. With the added snowfall Saturday, the event turned out to be extra challenging! Many teams commented that they liked the challenge; others just said “d#@m, it’s slippery!” The challenging weather also resulted in higher than usual scores for everyone.

Five teams competed in Stock class. Jacob Peters and Matt Rhoads took first place with 277 points and Alvin Fong and William Buck took second at 395 points. Scott Grinnell and Jamie Hayslip rounded out the top three with 447.5 points.

Limited was bested once again by Karl Haltiner and DeVillo McCann with 138 points. Marnie Soom and Cassie Rife had 623.5 points and dropped from B to C speed after checkpoint 1. John Werner and David Weisbran had 1107.75 points for 3rd in class.

Equipped had five teams with Tim Penasack and Mark Goldfarb taking first in class and first overall with 94.5 points. Gary Thomas and John Kastenhuber placed second in class and third overall with 149 points. Third place was Curtis Braun and Ben Gilmore with 220 points for fourth overall.

Novice had five teams competing. Brian Carlei and Michelle Quinn placed first in class with 1225 points. Carl VanKesteren and Colin Lamb tried their hand and winter rally (Carl is a regular ice racer) and came out in second place with 1307 points. Michael Ortega and Camden Boyd rounded out the top three in their Mazda RX8 (not a usual rally car) with 1331 points.

As with all of these events, there is no way that they could be run without lots of dedicated workers. I would like to thank Paul Vogel and Brian Barlow for working checkpoints 1 and 9. Bob and Ryan VanSice worked checkpoints 2 and 10. John Walsh and Rich Smith staffed checkpoints 3 and 11. Craig McMaster, Alan and Peter Blood worked checkpoints 4 and 12. Carl Dresie and Nick Babbin worked checkpoints 5 and 13. Steve Kittleberger and Barb Lissow worked checkpoints at 6 and 14. Jerry Kerwin worked checkpoint 7 and 15 by himself. Karl Haltiner and Mac McCann were car 1 and also Checkpoint 8.

I would also like to thank Roy Hopkins for doing tech and Deb Langdon for doing registration, Tom Langdon for teaching the Novice school and Brian Barlow for signing people up for the food at the end of the event. Mike Toombs showed up at registration and “volunteered” to ride with me for course opening tasks. Rick Barnes and Jason Kostyshak saved my bacon and performed sweep tasks which were very important given the weather. Lastly, I would like to thank my wife Amy; she allows me the many hours of time to put this event together.

Now that you have read through the “bread and butter” section of the report, there are always a few stories that come out of every event. I heard a few of them throughout the night. Feel free to ask these people for more details. Marnie Soom was rallying her CRX which unfortunately has minimal ground clearance and became a road block on the “Mudville Rd”. I also heard that she explored some ditches later in the evening. Peter Blood performed a little ditch exploration right in front of checkpoint 5 and required the assistance of the sweep truck to get back out. And finally John Walsh ended up going straighter at T than desired and now also has a ditch named after him.

There were also a couple other instances of excitement with the route. Mike and I were at checkpoint 2 when I received a call from Rich Smith who was on his way to checkpoint 3. Apparently a semi decided to make a delivery of hay to a farm along the route and became stuck trying to get into the farm. The truck was blocking the ENTIRE road! With some quick thinking and the use a cell phones, we were able to create a reroute and call back with the final mileage just as the first car was arriving. Gotta love technology! Later in the route, we were supposed to travel the Mudville Road a second time (I love driving that road!), but after the deep snow on the first pass and the weather delays, I decided to short-circuit the route and bypass the second running. That eliminated checkpoint 14, but was the best choice since cars would have gotten stuck again, I’m sure.

Until the next event,

Alan Smith
Rallymaster, The Long Way Home