| Ken's Story:
Pre-Rally car prep: Unlike the previous Novice Workshop TSD, we were determined to have
the car ready in time for the rally. Paul and I spent a day getting
the lights mounted and wired properly (don't want a repeat of TSD Workshop
#3). It's amazing what you can do with about $40 of hardware from
Home Depot. We didn't even have to drill any holes, there were some
very convenient ones available. Thanks to Johnny at OK Tire, I have
a set of Toyo Garit HT's. I found out that a full size wheel and
tire just fits in the spare tire well with a little persuasion. Due
to a delay in getting a wiring harness, the ham radio had to be mounted
in a temporary spot in the passenger side of the car.
Friday: Pre-Rally We hit the road just before 4:30PM and had to battle Friday rush-hour
all the way until we got past Mission. We made it into Cache Creek
right at 9:00 and registered, but it was too late for tech. We had
some dinner and called it a night. The only eventful thing was that
I had booked a little late and we could only get a room with a single bed.
I don't think our wives minded us sharing a bed for one night. I
keep picturing the scene from Plains, Trains, and Automobiles ("Where’s
your other hand?” “Between two pillows.” “Those aren’t pillows!")
Saturday: Day 1 We're up at 6:30AM to grab some breakfast. Paul had the corned
beef hash, which he was going to discover was not a good choice later on.
The car made it through tech and once Paul had his math sorted out, we
hit the road. Stage 1 and 2 were fairly uneventful and we felt that
we were hitting the times pretty closely. The roads were interesting,
varying from hard pack to mud to packed snow. Stage 3 proved to be
a turning point for us and it shows in our scoring. Around 20Km into
stage, Paul's telling me that he's not feeling well and I can hear it in
his voice. We crank open a window to see if it will help, nope.
Around 30Km, Paul's really struggling now to keep the notes flowing and
not lose his breakfast. Around 40Km, breakfast finally decides it's
not staying down. Warning to navigators that read this, undo your
seatbelt if you think you're going to hurl. Another warning to drivers,
open another window, or you get to experience some of it as well!
I'll spare you the gross details, but it's sufficient to say that I drove
the rest of the stage without the benefits of notes (and didn't do too
badly, we were 48 seconds early). Fortunately, the next transit included
a fuel stop, where Paul cleaned up himself and the inside of car.
Since Paul was busy cleaning up, he didn't have a chance to get the math
finished and we ran the next stage without any timing numbers at all.
We were very confused at one point because we caught up to car 26 and car
28 caught up to us. We found out later that all three of us were
late. Paul regained his senses and managed to work out numbers for
the rest the regularities. The other excitement during the night
was at the start of the last regularity. As car 31 pulled up at the
end of the transit, there was this extremely loud pop! As we converged
on the car to find out what happened, we could see a big cloud of steam
and a growing river of liquid flowing from under the car. As it turns
out, the coolant reservoir blew up, there was a pretty impressive looking
hole in the side of the tank. We made it to MTC and had some dinner
as we waited for some results. We ended up with 348, with most of
the points occurring after the stage 3 mishap. We did extremely well
in the first stages, with 70 points.
Sunday: Day 2 It's an early start, we're up at 5:30AM. No breakfast for Paul today! Paul has lots of time get his math in order today. We hit the road and we're hoping to make up for yesterday's misfortunes. Stage 1 is very slippery, frozen mud, ice, and packed snow. About 20Km into the stage I come around a corner a little too hot and we start to slide sideways towards a shallow ditch on the left. I hit the gas in hopes of pulling out of the slide, but we have a little too much sideways momentum to recover. Fortunately, the skid plate did its job and a quick shift into 2nd kept us moving as we slid into the ditch and powered our way out. Lost time, only a few seconds. However things don't get better. As we're running through stage 3, car 28 catches and passes us. Umm, Paul, are you sure your numbers are right? We start deliberating about what's going on. I'm remembering from previous workshop classes, where we were told run you own race, don't worry about anybody else. Well, when I see car 29's headlights, I'm thinking that the calculations have to be off. Paul franticly checks his math and finally discovers the error. Now to make up for the lost time. I hit the gas and we pass car 28, who are now a little confused by our antics. The water splash in stage 2 was a hoot and the 'car breaking ditch' was interesting. The skid plate did it's job though the nasty rough stuff that cam after the ditch. The rest of the day was uneventful for us and we hit our computed times (incorrect as they were). We ended up with 644 points, but we weren't in last. The Toyo Garit HT's were superb! They handled all of the road conditions extremely well and I recommend them highly.
Paul's Story Friday, November 15th Before we left Vancouver, we were determined to get to Cache Creek in time for the final Novice workshop session. As it happens, we didn't - traffic out of Vancouver is a complete pain in the ass on a Friday night. We had taken great pains to install the driving lights on the front of the car this time. During the previous rally, they were attached to the roof rack of Ken's car, and while that was fine in terms of lighting the road, it wasn't quite legal. The wiring was a bit 'iff-y' as well - hooked in to the cigarette lighter socket. That proved to be a mistake.... "I think I smell something, Ken" "What, I can't smell anything" <A few seconds go by> "No, I definitely smell something. Maybe it's outside." <Flash! Pop! Driving lights go out. Ken grabs for the light plug in the cigarette lighter socket, and drops it quickly with a yelp.> "I guess it was the plug melting," He says somewhat nonchalantly, immediately returning to the task of piloting. Anyway, this time, the wiring was secure, and the funky bracket Ken thought up actually did a great job of holding the lamps steady. We'd given them a quick trial in a fairly dark part of the city, and Ken seemed to feel that they were good enough for now. Onward, then. Saturday, November 16th We got the route books early enough that I was able to do about two thirds of the math done well before we left Cache Creek. I knew it would be a pain later to not finish all of it, but I figured I had the time on the transit sections. We were going to run six Regularities today - the longest by far that we'd ever done: Altogether, the day's driving added up to 480 km. Stage one went quite well, but I had to admit, that maybe the heavy breakfast wasn't the best idea. I took a Gravol - only the second time I'd felt that I had to - and during the transit from stages one to two, all seemed okay. We finished stage two handily as well, but I was really starting to feel sick. Breakfast just wasn't agreeing with me, and as we got well into stage three, I warned Ken that I wasn't doing as well as I might. By the middle of stage three, my hands were going numb, my legs were cramping, and it was getting difficult to talk. I was truly sick, and trying hard not to upset the process of rallying. Note to others, and an acknowledgement to those who've gone before: UNDO THE DAMN SEATBELT! It makes getting your head out the window so much easier if you're going to woof your cookies! Oh, my God - it was gross. I have never been car-sick before, and even the idea of what happened still makes me cringe. Ken deserve's a medal for not exploding all over me for making such a disgusting, sticky mess all over the passenger side of the car. Another piece of advice: If you can find them, use barf bags. That way you don't have to open the window at all. Ah. Where were we? Yes: Puking. After I'd managed to quite literally empty my stomach, I felt surprisingly better, and was able to start back in to the process of guiding Ken along the route. Cleaning up in Clinton was another adventure in "Why we don't stick our heads out of the car to throw up." I won't upset anyone else by describing the results, but it was rather distressing to see exactly where little chunks of undigested breakfast could get to. Since I hadn't had the opportunity to do any preparation though, we fell a bit out of sync over stage four. I was back into things well enough by the end of that stage to get some of the math done for stages five and six during the transits, so we recovered a bit of our timing. The driving lights turned out to be working much better than we'd thought. If we were really perfectionists, we might have done better, but aimed by eyeball alone in a not-quite-dark-enough side street, we had more than enough light on the road to keep us going. We rolled into Williams Lake tired - and still smelling corned beef from every slightly porous surface in the car, including my clothes - but triumphant. We'd run a full day of rally without getting lost, crashing the car, or falling too far off timing (at least by our standards). Sunday, November 17th After yesterday's breakfast incident it was "Nothing solid for me thanks," at the White Spot, and my morning tea washed down a Gravol for good measure. Again we got the route books early enough for me to knuckle down with the calculator, determined that I'd have as much of the Regularity data ready long before we needed it I must have been a little fuzzy somewhere in there though, because I managed to make a huge, repetitive mistake in my math. Instead of adding a ten-second pause to one of the instructions, I dutifully added that same ten seconds to every subsequent instruction. It didn't show up until we got to the end of stage two, when car 29 caught us (car 28 had unfortunately gone swimming on this stage, thus leaving a two-minute gap behind us). I swear, I went over those calculations feverishly, trying to figure out where I went wrong, all to no avail. Kevin from car 29 actually asked if he had the right time on his stopwatch to be sure it wasn't their error. By the time the we were halfway through stage three, car 28 had passed us, and car 29 was again looming from the rear, when the penny dropped. "Oh, shit! I figured it out now." I managed to explain the problem to Ken, who launched the car ahead in a frantic effort to regain our lost time in the last quarter of the stage. Did I mention that the WRX is a superb platform for this kind of rally? Plenty of power, but not so touchy that it requires constant fiddling to control. The only difficulty was reminding Ken to keep to our required speeds - I was enjoying the ride as much as Ken, and it seemed somehow cruel to force him to shut it down all the time. Thankfully, there were no pauses in the final stage of the day, and my math skills - though procedurally a bit suspect - proved adequate to the task. So where did we end up? We placed 24th out of 32 cars, and seventh in the novice class. Not too bad considering that I'd lost it for almost all of three stages on day one, and blown the calculations all to hell for half of day two. Not counting the 700 km round trip from Vancouver, we'd rallied for over 870 km during the two days, ending up with a score of 644 seconds 'off perfect' over terrain that varied from dry gravel to asphalt to frozen mud to ice. For our first 'real' rally, not too bad. If I hadn't blown the calculations (or chunks of breakfast) we might have brought that down to less than half the total. Oh well, such is life. Pictures? Tim
Rice's shots or Ken's from
before and after
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