“4th” of July Rally Report

This was the third year that I put on this type of rally.  The idea is to run for a couple of hours, stop for a nice relaxed lunch and then resume the rally to come home. This year we stopped at the Beef House in Indiana.   The two previous years I made the rally fairly simple.  This year it was a little more challenging.  We have to thank Harold and Karen Davis for the first part.  They had laid out that part to put on their own rally but Harold had cataract surgery and wasn’t quite ready to do it at this point.  They put in the “protected” main road rule part of the first half.  My job was to turn their directions into rally instructions, mileage it, and make sure it worked and produce paperwork.  The second half of the rally was laid out by Cheryel and I. 

The teams did fairly well on the first half.  I was quite surprised that everyone made it through the first leg and were generally close to their calculated times.  The first leg was forty five minutes long and that was without the Odometer Comparison Section as I had everyone re-zero their odometers before the start of the measured portion of the first leg.

The two teams that ran the Navigational class did not ultimately finish the entire rally.  One team was from California and were here for a Porsche Club event.  They were just checking their equipment to make sure everything was in order.  The other team from Indianapolis were competing with the California group and didn’t want to interfere with our awards and points.

Even though some of the Navigational class leg scores seemed a little high I noticed that there scores were never more than 4 points difference between the two teams.  When one had a problem the other did also. 

I want to thank everyone who helped.  Not only did Harold and Karen put together some great roads but the extra little things like the run up the hill In Newport where the hill climb for vintage cars is held every Fall to finding at least one covered bridge to cross.  The scenery was great and the roads were fun.  They also worked half of the checkpoints so we did not need to hold vehicles at any checkpoint. 

 I want to thank Gary Patrick for cold running the rally just a few days before the event.  He had some great input also.  Cheryel helped considerably by helping lay out the second leg and mileaging the entire rally.  I was also happy that we could put on a long rally with good weather. 

Now, where can we eat next year?

Mike Blackwelder