| Friday: Pre-Rally
This year's Totem Rally seemed somehow 'old hat' as we tooled happily up Highway One to Cache Creek. We left much earlier than last year and avoided all of the hassles of rush hour traffic. We also managed to get a room in a different hotel - one that we actually think is somewhat better than the Bear's Claw Lodge. At least we avoided the issue of a shared bed this year. This year too, I wasn't taking any chances with the possibility of motion sickness: Scopalamine patches for yours truly! Registration was on time, as was tech inspection. It seemed much colder this year, but drier too. The wind was a bit too nippy to stay outside for too long. I guess we've come up in the world of rallying too: We were asked to brief the novice group on Friday evening. An event that I wasn't sure I was going to like. Given that the group was three teams, I think it was an intimate enough gathering to quell my fears of public speaking. Saturday: Cache Creek to Williams Lake Not too bad of a day. We ran well, but still managed to accrue too many points to be up in the lead. The Scopalamine works great! Almost too well. I was able to do all of the math for the entire day by the end of the first leg - even down to odometer corrections. We staggered in to Williams Lake in reasonable order and spent a night in a different hotel than last year's event - 399 points for the day. Sunday: Day 2 One of the legs was cancelled due to heavy snow - the previous day had
actually been fine as far as we were concerned, but some of the other cars
did have some trouble. Leg four went away - I don't even think we were
given route instructions for it. Again, the patch worked wonders, and I
was able to keep up not only the necessary information from the route book,
but also added in some extra times and distances between instructions.
This really helped on the second stage of the day, but it was still difficult
to deal with ice - as opposed to snow, which is no problem at all. We finished
Sunday with 264 points. Not too bad for a bunch of 'only do this twice
a year' guys.
Pictures? Tim
Rice's shots or Ken's from
before and after
|