Conference oass::racers

                   Tiadaghton Trails Pro Rally
                        Williamsport, PA
                          May 3-5, 1991

Well, it was a depressing event.  First we lost our brakes (fortunately at
the finish) on the first woods stage, and I figured we were done.  Turned
out we'd blown out a rear brake line, so we ended up crimping off the line
to that one corner and continuing on.  We took a little too long in service
making the repairs, so we were rushing on the next transit to make up time;
we were almost to the stage start when we came upon John Buffum, the
National Steward, standing in the road.  We stopped (a good feeling) so
he could give us a 5-minute penalty for speeding on the transit (a bad
feeling).  Thus delayed, we picked up another minute when we finally checked
in late at the control.  With this many road points, we were pretty much
out of the competition, but my right foot still said "go", and we were
tooling along full-tilt-boogie when a poorly-placed tree ended our day
two stages later, literally 100 feet from the stage finish (we took out
their "entering control" sign).  There is no indication that the earlier
brake problems had anything to do with the crash.

Neither of us was hurt (save the odd bruise from the harnesses), but the car
sustained significant damage, which will be expensive and/or time-consuming
to repair.  It's not yet clear how quickly I will be able to get it
raceworthy again.  We will see.

                 Red Baron Roundtop Harrisburg PRO Rally
                        Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
                             30 June 1991

Bob MacNeal and Greg Collins are to be commended for putting together an 
excellent rally.  Roundtop was extremely well organized, and it offered 
a tremendously challenging race for both the drivers and the cars.  A 
true achievement for first-time rally organizers.

For this rally I had the pleasure of co-driving with Lesley Suddard
and being part of this year's only all-girl PRO Rally team.  Now 
normally I drive with Carl Fisher, president of the shoe string 
chapter of PRO Rally racing.  We don't have a regular service team, 
and usually we try to convince some unsuspecting soul to drive the 
service vehicle around for us.  Carl and I usually do all our own 
work on the car, and there are always numerous last-minute things to 
be taken care of the night before the rally.  Driving with Lesley is 
a bit different.  Being the only woman driver competing in any of the 
national competitions this year, Lesley has a pack of service groupies 
that follow her around wherever she goes.  I got to experience this 
rally from a much more pampered viewpoint.  The night before the race, 
the navigator's computer wasn't working right, but I didn't need to 
worry about it.  It was all taken care of by the morning.  All I had 
to do was arrive on time and climb into the navigator's seat.  The 
service crew even adjusted the safety harness straps for me.  I think 
I could get used to this.  

I'd ask for slightly cooler weather next time, though.  Temperatures
we in the upper 90s all day.  I don't mind the heat so much when I'm
sitting at the beach, but I'm not so fond of it when I'm wearing a 
double layer Nomex suit and a crash helmet.  Fortunately our service
crew was well stocked with fluids and ice.  They were always ready with
cold towels to wrap around our necks whenever we pulled into service.

Roundtop was a Coefficient 2 Divisional PRO Rally, and it was run 
entirely on the grounds of the Ski Roundtop Ski Area, just south of 
Harrisburg, PA.  That's right -- on the ski slopes.  There were plenty 
of excellent spectator areas also, and spectating was possible on 
every stage.  (Lesley always attracts a strong spectator following 
also.)  The rally consisted of 10 special stages, each between 3 and 
4 miles in length.  The terrain consisted of big wide hills (the ski 
slopes) and extremely tight twisty wooded roads.  Because of the 
limited number of roads available, we wound up covering the same 
stretch of dirt time and time again.  Familiarity doesn't always 
make things easier, though, as many found out.  

The rally started with 20 teams, lead off by Sakis Hadjiminas in his 
Open class Audi Quattro followed by Noel Lawler in his Production GT 
class Mistsubishi Galant VR4.  Lesley and I started in 7th position in 
a Production class Omni GLH.  Special Stage 1 was named Black Diamond 
Run.  It started precisely at 12:30 pm in front of the ski lodge.  We 
started with some quick auto-cross type action down on the parking lot, 
then headed off onto some of the lower traverse ski trails.  We got back 
around to the back of the ski lodge, then took a sharp left turn up the 
ski slope. It was quite steep, definitely a blue square slope.  Once we 
reached the top, we started down on the other side -- the course notes 
referred to it as the slalom course.  I think of it as the mogul run.
Once we got to the bottom we figured the worst was over, that is until we 
went into the woods.  The wooded trails were extremely narrow, extremely 
twisty, and extremely bumpy.  It gave me some excellent experience as a 
co-driver since the hazards appeared so quickly.  We had numerous single,
double, and triple cautions to be concerned about, and even after you've
driven the course four or five times, you still can't remember where all
the bad spots are.

We ended stage 1 with the respectable time of 7.81 minutes, 6th fastest
in the field, and second fastest in Production class, behind Dick Casey
in a VW Golf GTI.  He was ahead by 0.19 minutes, but we were bound and
determined to catch up with him.  Noel Lawler took the stage with an 
incredible time of 7.09 minutes, 0.38 minutes faster than Sakis.  Stage 1 
gave us a good taste for the rest of the rally.  It also marked the
beginning of an incredible attrition rate.  Tom Baker's Omni GLH couldn't
handle the rough terrain on the ski slope, and his electrical system was 
knocked out before he entered the woods.  Mark Childs couldn't quite keep 
his Vintage VW Rabbit on the road, and Keith Kreisler drove Greg Usavage's
Vintage Datsun 280Z into a tree near the start of the woods.  Two other
cars retired after stage 1 due to trashed suspension systems.

With the first stage behind us, we set off on the second stage, which 
happened to be exactly the same as the first, this time with only 15 
cars running.  We were very pleased to improve our time to 7.69 minutes, 
just .07 minutes slower than Dick Casey's first stage time.  But we were 
disappointed to find out that he had also improved his time, down to 
7.44 minutes.  We were now nearly half a minute behind Dick, and 
considering the roads, it didn't look too promising that we'd be able 
to make up the time.  But considering the attrition rate, we thought we 
still might have a chance to win.  Three more cars were knocked out of
the running, including Noel Lawler, whose turbo intake pipe was crushed 
by a rock.  

We were having so much fun on Black Diamond Run that we got to do it one
more time.  By this time we knew the road pretty well, and we improved our
time again, down to 7.54, but Dick still managed to widen the gap between
us.  Martin Landrum, driving Noel Lawler's Mazda 323 GTX, managed to 
crash into the woods, and Sakis lost his turbo.  So at the end of three
stages, half of the cars were out.  Our Omni was taking a beating, too.  
Lesley's ever-efficient service crew changed a rear strut during the 
service break between stages 3 and 4.  Unfortunately, we cut the time a 
little too close.  We missed a turn on the transit and arrived three 
seconds late to check into stage 4, and I acquired my first ever road 
point.  Fortunately, all of our close competition had knocked themselves
out of the race, and our place was secure, even with the extra minute 
added to our time.

Stage 4 took us off to a new course -- no ski slopes this time.  But we
did cover the same section in the woods, which by now was getting very
chewed up.  It was getting hard to distinguish the cautioned whoop-ti-doos
from the regular bumps.  An Act of God also occurred during this stage.
Sometime during the minute between two cars a tree fell across the road.
Fortunately no one was there at the precise minute that the tree fell.
Four cars were stopped for 3-6 minutes as the teams worked to get the
oak out of the road.  They managed to yank the tree just far enough to one
side to allow a car to pass.  Meanwhile, Rick Davis stuffed his Vintage 
BMW 2002 into a tree when he went straight at a T.  We also didn't survive 
unscathed.  We got a flat just at the end of the stage, which we didn't 
notice until we were lined up to start the next stage.  Changing a tire 
on a road which is approximately 9 inches wider than your car has always 
been one of my favorite activities.  But the guys in the other teams wanted 
to take part in the fun, too, and they offered to helped us out.  Ken Beard 
cracked the nuts for us while Dick Casey helped us jack up the car.  
(Somehow I can't imagine another team helping Carl and me change a flat 
tire.  This all-girl team stuff sounds better all the time...)

Stage 5 had us run the same road as Stage 4, only this time in reverse.
But there was the added excitement of avoiding the tree which blocked
the road.  On this stage we only had one casualty when the tranny in Ed 
Brennan's Vintage Saab 99 gave out.  

By this time it was 5:30 pm and time for a dinner break.  We all cruised 
back to the ski lodge for some Red Baron pizza and bemoaned the loss of 
12 vehicles.  We started up again at 6:30 with only 8 vehicles in the 
running.  The cars were reseeded during the dinner break, and we were 
now starting in third position.

Stage 6 was a repeat of stage 4, although they had managed to remove the 
downed tree during the dinner break.  The road was getting brutal, but 
remarkably, no cars were lost.  But this reprieve was not to last.  During
stage 7 (a repeat of stage 5) Jerzy Bajno in his Group A VW Golf GTI 
finally called it quits when he ran out of spare tires, and Ken Beard 
broke an axle in his Production GT Omni GLH Turbo.

Ever gluttons for punishment, we continued on.  Stages 8, 9 and 10 were 
repeats of the Black Diamond Run.  It was refreshing to get back up onto 
the ski slopes again, but the course was still brutal.  Two more cars 
were lost during stage 8, leaving only 4 cars to start stage 9.  At this 
point we started to come to our senses.  The 4 remaining teams unanimously
agreed to call it quits for the day.  The organizers graciously agree to 
cancel the last two stages.

The final results:  Vinnie Frontian, with Orlando Monteiro co-driving, 
came in first in Group A class and first overall in his Toyota Celica.
Dick Casey, with Martin Depot co-driving, came in first in Production 
class and second overall in his VW GTI.  Lesley and I came in second 
in Production class and third overall in her Omni GLH.  And Dean Fry,
with Don Kennedy co-driving, came in first in Vintage class in his 
Subaru.

Sixteen cars did not finish:  4 crashes, 6 suspension/axle/tire problems, 
and 6 mechanical/electrical problems.  Pretty dismal.

Even though the losses were so high, it was a very good rally.  (And 
I'm not just saying that because we finished in the top three!)  The 
roads were extremely challenging for drivers, co-drivers, and cars.  
Ski Roundtop has promised that if this rally didn't cause too much 
damage, next year they'll open up some other roads for the rally.  If 
Bob and Greg can manage to convince them to provide more roads, this
rally might turn into one of the best rallies in the northeast -- 
certainly competitive with Tiadaghton and STPR.  Keep it in mind for
next year.
    

                         Rallye Baie des Chaleurs
                           New Richmond, Quebec
                             July 12-13, 1991

After crashing at Tiadaghton, I ended up buying another car (also a 1985 Omni),
and turning that into a rally car rather than trying to fix the old one.    
I was able to take most of the rally gear directly from the wrecked car,
including the cage, harnesses, engine (balanced/blueprinted), tranny, rally
springs, brakes/Aeroquip lines, skid plates, rally computer, lights, and
dozens of other little parts I knew were fresh on the old car, compared to
their equivalents on the "new" car with 96K undocumented miles on it.

This was the first event for the new car, and I hadn't had much time to see
how all the parts were working together, so the plan was to take it easy, try
to work out (or at least note) any bugs we found, and finish the race.  We
succeeded to varying degrees on all of these counts, finishing 15th overall,
and 4th in class.

As was the case last year, it was an extremely fast event, with several
sections where the road stretched off ahead as far as the eye could see, the
cars being limited only by their top speeds (in my case a little over 100
mph), and even for the twisty parts, being flat out in fourth gear was not
unusual.  That's not to say there wasn't any lower-speed stuff in there- I
think that's where we did best- when we weren't in (and losing) a horsepower
contest.

Friday night's stages were twisty, fast, and dusty.  They used many of the
same roads as last year, so I was able to remember some of the trickier
parts and avoid making some of the mistakes I made last time.  One place was
an S-bend over a wooden bridge followed quickly by a blind uphill acute right.
You're tooling along at 60 (mph) or so into a right bend, which then tightens
abruptly and you have to thread-the-needle over the bridge while a couple
hundred drunken Canucks flash you with their cameras (a Labatts truck sets up
at this popular spectator point).  Then a 90 left on the other side, and up
the hill to the blind acute.  Last year everyone was blowing by this turn,
but this time I was ready.  Toss the car hard right, apparently at a bunch of
spectators standing on the hill, and voila! the road appears in the right
place!  Pedal down in second, and away we went.

Despite rain earlier in the week, dust was still a problem, and even with the
cars starting two minutes apart, sometimes visibility was dangerously low.
They kept the 6 km stretch of smooth pavement in the middle of a couple of
last year's stages, too, and they provided a welcome change from all the dust
and the noise of rocks banging off the undercarriage.  The pavement was in
great shape with some really nice curves, and it made me wish I had some road
racing experience to really take advantage of it.  But soon it was back to
the rocks and blinding dust.

Tires were a problem for us Friday night.  We had brought 6 brand-new knobbies
which were just the ticket for the road conditions, but we got a nail in one
(through the tube), and then the valve stem split on another, leaving us with
no good spares.  Fortunately the night's racing ended before we could mess up
another one, and we got up early the next morning to find a place to fix them
for us.  Luckily, one of the event organizers runs a garage, and he put 2 new
tubes in for us and billed the cost to General Tire, who despite pulling out
as series sponsor this year, was still apparently doing favors for people.

Saturday morning it was raining as we were eating breakfast, so I wasn't
looking forward to running the spectator stage at Pointe Taylor.  I'd seen the
videos from two years back with the cars getting stuck in the mud holes and
taking detours through the grass rather than risk going straight through.
When we got there, though, the puddles weren't too bad, and no one got stuck.

Then it was on to the rockiest, roughest stage of the event.  It featured
super-steep hills and big yumps, with sharp-edged rocks strewn everywhere.
The road would invariably take a sharp turn so you'd have to slow way down,
then you'd find yourself at the bottom of a monster hill.  The Omni just
didn't have the grunt, and we had to crawl up these things in first gear at
25 mph (had plenty of time to check the speedo).  The finish was at the
top of a long hill too, and it was almost funny to see how far back the
control workers were standing from the finish marker.  Apparently the big
cars (pronounced 4WD turbos) were really moving across the finish line- we
were still in second gear.

The most eventful stage of the day was one run 10 miles away in the town of
Maria.  It was only 2.5 km long, but it sure caused some trouble.  First there
was an acute right that was only tuliped as a right bend.  A lot of people
found that fourth was a bad choice of gears for that one (we just barely made
it ourselves).  The other trouble spot was a long straightaway across a field
that was interrupted by about an 8-foot descent to a stream bed then right
back up again.  That was at least given a caution in the route book, but I
wasn't the only one who hit it too fast.  The transition from down to up was
very sharp, and we slammed into the stream, bottoming out the car so heavily
that the skid plate (3/8" thick aluminum) tore off and we broke one of the
motor mounts.  I was foolish not to have brought a spare mount, but we were
able to use a bolt and some locking nuts to at least locate the engine
vertically and keep the halfshafts from hitting the control arms; and if I
hung onto the shifter for the rough stuff, it wouldn't pop out of gear.  We
were happy to see the arrival of what was left of the skid plate in the hands
of a courteous local (the stream bed was a popular spectator point).

In the end, as I mentioned, we finished 15th overall of only 26 starters and
21 finishers.  Anne did a great job as "co-pilote" (as they say up there),
keeping us on course and on time.  We were 4th in Production, only *2* seconds
behind the third place team (I knew I shouldn't have lifted!)  We were second
in Novice (folks with no top 10 finishes at national events), for which we got
a pretty big trophy, and $111 (CDN) for turning some good times on sponsored
stages.  It was not a particularly strong finish, but for the first time out
in an unproven car, we were pleased with it.  Our next event will be Rally
of the Voyageurs, in North Bay, Ontario in September.

Carl, try climbing that rocky stage with only 3 cylinders firing!  That's what I ended
up doing in '89.

I suppose the biggest thing I miss about the Canadian rallies are the people.  They are
very friendly, even if you can't talk their language.

Why not haul the Omni down here for a coef 2 divisional on August 24th just east of
Atlanta?

Dave

Thanks, Dave, but the "budget" this year only includes NARC events ('course
a new car wasn't in the budget either... :-).  I doubt I'll go to Ojibwe,
but I'm planning to be at Voyageurs, Press-on-Regardless, and Tall Pines.
If I've still got a running car after Tall Pines, I might enter the new
event in Maine this December.  A National event in New England, wow!  I bet
it'll only be a 4-hour tow!  I'm looking forward to it.

It's too bad you moved down south, I always wanted to race against the guy
who got me started in rallying...

Carl

                      Rally of the Voyageurs
                       September 6-8, 1991
                        North Bay, Ontario

I felt very unprepared for this event, since the rally car was in Vermont
getting worked on right up until the time we picked it up.  This means we
hauled an empty trailer to Vermont, loaded up the car, then continued on
to Ontario.  So not only hadn't I driven the car since the last event (at
the end of July), but I also came to realize that all the various mechanical
preparation I do before a rally is also part of my mental preparation.  Not
having to sweat the last-minute details might not seem like much of a loss,
but I had to keep reminding myself that it was a rally weekend and I'd better
get ready to drive.

The first stage was a 1-kilometer paved spectator stage through a park in
downtown North Bay, it was nothing worth talking about.  The next three
stages were on roads that were so rough they weren't worth talking about
either, except to say that, as we were bouncing off rocks the size of soccer
balls churned up by all the turbo rototillers before us, we decided just
finishing would be good enough.

Fortunately the rest of the event used nicer roads, and we did resume our
efforts to go fast.  But although it seemed like we were moving along pretty
well most of the time, but when we compared our times with the people who we
thought were our closest competition, we found we were still getting our
clocks cleaned.  Either we were losing a lot of time in places that weren't
obvious to me, or these guys were really a lot faster than I thought.  At
the reseed, we moved up from 18th on the road to 12th, but most of that was
due to heavy attrition in the ranks (saw a few nice rollovers).

We didn't have too many close calls ourselves, but we did manage to spin
twice- once between the finish of a stage and the timing car (prompting a
few nervous looks from the workers), and once after a crest in the middle of
a stage.  The road there was narrow enough we had to make a 5-point turn to get
back around, and I was getting pretty nervous imagining the next car coming
over the crest and T-boning us before we got going again.  More significant
was the jolt we took landing off an un-cautioned jump (if it's a hard landing
I think they should put a caution in the route book), which knocked something
loose up front.  It acted like we lunched another motor mount, but nothing
seemed too funny under the hood, so we just left it alone.  We had more
important things to do, like put the lights on for the night stages, and get
the map light working (a detail forgotten from after the last race until then).

On the last daylight stage we got a hole in one of our heater hoses, so we
had lost almost all our coolant and were running a little hot by the end.  We
lucked out in three ways:  1) The next stage was the same one we'd just run,
but in the other direction, so we didn't have to drive anywhere, we just
waited in place for our turn to run again (about 45 minutes); 2) The hole was
right where the hose entered the heater core, so by stretching the hose a
little we were able cut out the bad section; and 3) though we were in the
middle of the woods, there happened to be a swampy pond there.  We refilled
the radiator with fetid brown water, and it worked great.  In fact, we ran
the whole last half of the rally with the stuff in there.  Better remember to
wash it out before the next event, eh?

The dust was not too bad that night, but even with 2-minute gaps between cars
visibility was not what I'd call good.  It was patchy, which made it hard to
drive smoothly, as we were always in and out of 30 foot visibility conditions,
often at speeds around 100-115 km/h (60-70mph).

As we waited to start the last stage of the night, the codrivers were comparing
notes to see what the current standings were.  A friend of mine who is, in all
honesty, an extremely fast driver but an intolerable braggart, figured he was
30 seconds out of second place.  Thirty seconds is a lot to make up on a 15
kilometer long stage, especially among the company he was running against, but
I could see by the way he was stomping the ground that he was psyching himself
up for the drive of his life.  I, on the other hand, was sufficiently
humiliated by my standing that I decided just to take it easy and cruise home
to the finish.

My plan worked out better than my friend's, for just 2 km into the stage we
passed him, his codriver, and his car perched atop a rocky berm.  He didn't
look too badly off, considering he had 4-wheel-drive, but he later told me that
he had thumped the tranny and lost his gears.  I will confess to you, fellow
RACERS, that I couldn't resist honking and waving as we went by.

In the end, we finished 11th overall out of 28 starters, but only 14 finishers.
And although it was our best overall finish at a national event, being so far
back in the pack took some of the thrill out of it.  We were 5th in Production
class out of 10 starters and 7 finishers.  My friend realized later that they'd
miscalculated and had been firmly in posession of second place (but still way
out of first place) going into that fateful final stage.  "To finish first,
first you must finish".

                          Maine Forest Rally
                             Rumford, ME
                          December 6-7, 1991

I wasn't expecting a winter rally.  The entry details I got in the mail
said to expect 3-4 inches of snow on the road, and I figured, sure, that's
possible, but for the first week in December it's more likely to just be
frozen dirt.  That's what I was hoping for.  I don't like driving on snow.
The line between grip and no grip is too fine for my tastes.  Still, I
decided to buy a set of Hakkapeliitta snow tires to help guarantee dry
conditions.

The Tuesday before the event we got 3 inches of heavy snow and ice in New
Hampshire, and then it got cold, so I knew it was going to be slick in
Maine.  I can honestly say that if I knew there was going to be snow for
the event, I wouldn't have entered.  But I didn't, so I did, and I wasn't
about to just turn and walk away after dropping $350 on the entry.  So we
settled on a simple strategy for the event:  just finish.

We left Friday morning in moderate snow, which continued all the way up
to Rumford.  We registered, got the car through tech, then headed to our
hotel to get ready for the 6PM start.  Having never finished a US national
before (despite finishing 4 Canadian nationals), we were given car #33, 23rd
on the road out of 29 entries.

It was still snowing when we started, and the main roads were a mess.  We
were sliding and spinning our wheels on the frigging transits, what would
the stage roads be like?  We found out soon enough- they were solid ice
with 2-3 inches of snow on them, narrow, twisty, often with dropoffs on
one or both sides.  In summer and fall, they must be beautiful rally roads,
but now they made a frictionless roller coaster with no rails.  We saw our
first car off at the first major corner of the first stage.  Jeez.  I wasn't
having fun.  I wanted to go change my underwear and head back to the bar.

Somehow, we made it to the finish without going off.  OK, on to the next
stage.  An uphill start.  Why do these things always have to have uphill
starts?  And this one was on ice!  But the Hakkas gripped like champs, and
not only were we able to get moving from a standstill, we actually managed
some modest acceleration, though not without plenty of wheelspin.  Another
twisty, icy road, but we noticed the tire tracks from the cars before us were
often finding slight ruts in the road and hooking in them for better grip.
So we followed the tracks wherever we could.  Often we'd come around a corner
and the single set of tracks would turn into a dozen sets, crisscrossing and
heading off the road at different angles, but almost always heading back on
again.  We'd hit it and the steering would go light, but we always seemed
to muddle through somehow.

At the start of the next stage, we compared times with some of our friends.
Ugh.  I guess that's what happens when you're not really trying.  A guy
came up to us and said he passed the two cars behind us during the last
stage, would we mind if he started ahead of us?  His stage time was more
than a minute faster than ours, so we said no problem buddy, we're only
looking to finish.  Just don't block the road when you go off.

About 2 miles into the stage, we see our crazy friend way off down a ten
foot gully.  That must have been a fun ride.  I'm starting to feel a little
better about the event.  Sure everyone else here is a psychopath, but
they're all driving into places that they can't drive out of.  And sure,
there's no traction to speak of, and we hit things buried in the snow that
throw us sideways for no apparent reason, and the steering wheel occasionally
doesn't have any effect on the car's direction, but there's something
peaceful about snow falling in the forest at night that calms me down.  We
complete our stages for the night with no major incidents, drop the car off
at impound and are back in our hotel room by midnight.

The next morning we get up early so we have time to work on the car when
impound opens at 8AM.  All day Friday the car had been sputtering under
full throttle which wasn't a big deal since we almost never wanted it, but
by evening the car would barely run.  We changed the plugs and put in a
different coil and that seemed to fix it.  The organizers reseeded us based
on our times from the previous night, and we were moved up to 16th, 5 cars
having gone out so far.  It was now snowing heavily, and the forecast was
for 4 to 8 more inches.  The transit out to the first stage was a joke.
Visibility sucked, and it was really only safe to go 35-40 mph.  Unfortunately,
when they decided on the time allowances for the transits, the weather must
have been better, so everyone had to drive like idiots to check in on time,
passing cars and trucks when we couldn't see what's coming the other way.

The first stage Saturday was the same as the last stage Friday night, but
run in the other direction, 6.54 miles long.  It's still icy, and now the
snow was drifting and covering the tracks from the previous cars.  Many of
the rally roads had one lane bridges along the way, built by placing 2 boards
down for the wheels to roll on, on top of transversely mounted logs, and
some of them don't have railings.  So far we were batting about .300 for
getting all the wheels on the boards, and this morning we gave ourselves
a thrill by taking one of the no-railing bridges at about a 45 degree drift
angle.  We still managed to better our Friday night time by 40 seconds.

The next stage was a 15.37 mile long bruiser, a dead end road where the cars
parked and waited for the last cars to come through before the first cars
could start their return run.  It was super slick, and twistier and bumpier
than most other stages so far.  In addition to the usual dropoffs and narrow
bridges, this road had skidders, bulldozers, tractor trailers and huge piles
of logs parked right next to the road in certain places.  I found I was having
an especially hard time getting the rhythm on this road.  A rut would grab
the wheel and veer us off into the deep snow (which was by now getting pretty
deep), which would slow us way down and attempt to suck us in, we'd fight our
way out and overcorrect over into the deep snow on the other side, sometimes
back and forth several times until we were almost stopped or the snow spray
covered the windshield, or both.  One time we overcooked a right bend and had
all 4 wheels off the road in the deep stuff heading down an embankment, but
fortunately we had enough momentum and traction to claw our way back up and
out.  There were a couple of long straightaways where I dared throttle up to
65-70, and we'd skid for a quarter mile trying to slow down for the curve at
the end.  We finally reached the end 24.72 minutes later, for an average
speed of 37 mph.  There, amazingly, some enterprising group had carted in a
snack shed and was selling hot dogs, coffee, and soda to a captive (and
hungry) audience.

There were some delays in opening the road for the run back, while they hauled
rally cars out of ditches or pushed them further into the ditches so they were
out of the way.  There were only 5 stages left in the event, and having made
it this far, I was determined to drive even slower on the way out, if that was
possible, to avoid DNFing now.  In going slower, and braking earlier, I found
a rhythm and actually ended up going faster.  We were tooling along pretty
well, in fact, when Anne read me a caution about logging equipment ahead, and
naturally we hit an ice patch just as I climbed on the brakes, and we slid
directly into a huge log pile.  Fortunately it didn't come tumbling down and
crush us, and fortunately we had slowed down enough that we didn't do more
than knock out a couple lights, and fortunately we were able to back up and
get back on the road without losing much time.  We still even beat our time
on the way in by 23 seconds!  Also fortunately, there was a service break
right at the end of that stage (where it was badly needed by most teams), and
we were able to get fixed up mostly back to normal.  We still had headlights,
but of our driving lights we were down to a single pencil beam, which was not
going to be too useful on such twisting roads as these.  It was only 2:00 in
the afternoon, but it would be dark before the next service.

It was still snowing like crazy, and after using all our scheduled service
time, we found ourselves in a big rush to check in at the next stage start.
Unfortunately, 11 miles of the transit was on a narrow stage-type road with
deep snow, and we were stuck behind another competitor who wasn't in such a
hurry as we were.  We probably could have gotten him to pull over for us,
but we figured we'd be more likely to stuff it if we went as fast as we
really needed to, and we'd never hear the end of it if we DNFed on a transit.
So we got to the control 2 minutes late, plowed around Mr. Rolling Roadblock,
and raced to the control car.  In another stroke of good fortune, the lady
working the control had mercy and granted us our correct minute for check-in,
avoiding what should have been a 2 minute penalty.

After running the next 2 stages, the organizers canceled the final 3 due to
a fear that they wouldn't be able to get the control workers (who stood in
the middle of the woods for hours in the storm) back out in their non-rally-
equipped cars.  So as of the final stage we did complete, they listed us as
being second in Production class and 14th overall, which was just dandy by
us.  We went back to the hotel and had some beers.  I wouldn't say it was
an enjoyable event, but it sure felt great to finish.

Apparently at some point during the final scoring, one Production car that
had been listed as DNF was found to have finished ahead of us, knocking us
down to 3rd in class and 15th overall.  Apparently they'd gone into a ditch
but been able to get out in time.  In fact we saw this car coming into
service with a tow strap trailing from its rear, and we'd seen a reflective
triangle left on the last stage with no car in sight, and asked the codriver
(in front of a rally official) if they had picked up all their triangles
and the codriver said no.  Officially they should have received a 10 minute
penalty for that oversight (since following cars slow down when they see a
triangle), and surely would have if we'd entered a protest.  But we didn't,
so we had to settle for 3rd in class.  We still were fastest in our seed
group, for which we got a plaque and a subscription to RALLY magazine, and
we advanced to the next higher seed group.  This will mean a slightly better
starting position for our next rally, which I'm not even thinking about
right now.  A very long and expensive rally season is over now.

    
    Excellent report Carl, but I have a question.
    
    Does 'batting .300' mean getting it right 3 times out of 10?
    
    Most American English phrases make it to us, but I've not encountered
    this one before.
    
    Mark

Good report Carl - I hear Thumper won and Bruno took the title...

Clean the snow off, drive back on the trailer and head south for about 20
hours!  We've got a rally this weekend up in Helen, GA.  Should be around
50-55 with a chance of rain.  Not sure which is worse, iced over roads or
wet GA clay!

Dave

Re: .8

Yep, "batting .300" means a 30% success rate.  Baseball statistics are a
big thing over here.

Carl

Re: .9

Choiniere won the event, but Chad DiMarco won the Subaru Championship
(appropriately enough).  I think Bruno did win the North American series
though.

Choiniere sure can drive in the snow!  I saw a short video clip and I
couldn't believe it!  His slides were perfectly choreographed, I can't
believe he had much margin for error if he didn't see what he expected
around a corner.  Bruno, in second place, was more than 5 minutes back
on him.  Then Canadians Frank and Dan Sprongl in a Quattro, Chad in the
Legacy, then Carl Merrill in his new Eclipse.

Carl

Thanks for the results.  The weather forecasts for the weekend down
here are looking more consistent - rain tomorrow into Saturday morning,
ending by noon.  Slime City.  We only had one wet spot last year and it
collected two cars.  I've only used my knobbies on snow, so it'll be
fun to find out how they work in wet clay.

Dave

Here are the two NER Worker NERD candidates from the Maine Rally. I hear
there's more coming... #'s 1-9 were from previous events. These are part
of the 1992 list.


WORKER N.E.R.D. AWARD : Given to the worker who best exemplifies the statement
                        "You shouldn't have seen me do it".

10. John Buffum: Acting as the chief steward during the Maine Rally, was 
    caught driving the wrong way AT SPEED on one of the stage roads. He 
    encountered workers travelling the correct direction, and had to put
    his car off the road to avoid hitting them.

11. Kevin Leach and Andy McInnes: While in the Maine woods for the rally,
    decided to display the "yellow" NER triangle in the snow.