Yesterday, Saturday, August 14, I had the pleasure of running Bob Townsend’s  ”Winding River Roads” rally.  Jimmy Hamilton and I rallied the Darth Vader Mobile on Bob’s rally.  It was on some roads I had never seen before south of Champaign and Philo.  It was wonderful.  A hot summer afternoon looking for the checkpoints and trying to keep on course.  Just a gentle rally with no tricks and lots of fun roads.  Jimmy and I have been on many rallies, but this is like the old ones.  It worked.  It was scenic, It was difficult at times to keep up to the cast, but there was always time to catch up.  It truly tested the ability of the driver to keep an average speed without just setting the cruise control and cruising, and the navigator to keep us on  course.  For a couple of old SOPers, it was the a great time.

I only regret I had to leave right after the end for some family fun, as Karen and Bob were  hosting their usual ‘big spread’ of food at the end at their home in Philo.  It is always fun to feast at the Townsends.

All in all a great rally.  Especially for an autocrosser like me.  You autocrossers out there should try rallies.  They are fun!  Jimmy and I had a blast the one time we missed a turn and got off course.  I don’t think we scared the rally chair and vice president too much when we passed to get back on time.

Speaking of……  what a great group of people to rally against.  Not a large turnout, but a good one with experienced ralliests.  Bob used some phantom checkpoints and several times you were to time yourself in to the phantom checkpoint and then give yourself an out time.  You could make your times perfect if you got the calculations right.  If there was a trick in this rally it was mentioning the phantom checkpoint on the outslip  instead of the route instructions.  Of course after the first phantom checkpoint we came upon a ralliest stopped and we realized we had missed the phantom check point, so we stopped and did some calculations.  Having thought we must be the only ones to forget it was proved wrong as we saw several rally cars parked along  the road recalculating in times and out times along the rally route quite a bit after the phantom check point locations.  We did the next phantom checkpoint at the right place.

Great rally, great time.  The Darth Vader Mobile ran great until the last checkpoint, where it vapor locked.  Once Jerry White’s navigator reminded me that some Corvettes have a pressurized fuel tank, I opened the gas cap and listened as it sucked in air .  Lots of air.  Then it started.  It did the same thing when I dropped Jimmy off to get his car, but got home fine.  Vapor lock!  Who would have thought.

Dennis Miller has called an autocross committee meeting for this coming Tuesday, August 19, 7 pm at his house.  All are welcome.

Yesterday, I attended our event at Coles County airport.  As usual, Tom Ingles and Greg Lukach did their usual fine job offering a quality autocross.  It was hot, but there was a breeze.  It was a pretty good day and the food was good at the Airport Steakhouse, as usual.

I noticed something I want to bring to the attention of our autocrossers.  It has been years…… years, since I was the starter. This is the most important job of any “work assignment” because the starter controls the pace of the event and who  enters the course and when.  It is very important that an experienced autocrosser be in this position.

Having said that, I have some concerns.  Course workers, of course, often consist of less experienced workers.  They are the most “in-the-way” of anyone and need to be careful or they could be injured.  After one of our entrants was injured at a St. Louis area autocross early in the year (not a CCSCC event, of course), we are trying to be very careful. But are we?

Yesterday’s course had a “Hit-most-often” cone that was the signal to the starter to start the next car.  But the starter couldn’t see the cone.  He only knew it had been hit when it was announced or the corner worker ran.  Literally seconds after that cone was passed was time to send the next car.  But the corner workers weren’t ‘fast’ on the response.  Once I sent the next car and ONLY THEN did the corner worker start running to get the cone!  So I backed off and waited.  Eventually we changed corner workers and it was better.

What should a corner worker do besides chase cones?  Well, we need to tell them to STAND STILL.  That is right.  If they are running along the course, we don’t necessarily know whether they are chasing a cone or exercising!  The corner work needs to stand still if not chasing a cone.  We need to tell them that.

One more comment.  Comments to the starter by entrants about car spacing are not really helpful, since the entrant is not “in the starter’s shoes”.  The person who needs to discuss the starting instructions with the starter is the safety steward.  It would be good for us to remember that the starter is a volunteer upon whose decisions the safety of the workers and entrants depends.

For the first time I’m going to allow comments to an editorial on this web page.  Bring them on!