Yesterday, July 3, I was fortunate enough to run Mike Blackwelder and Harold Davis’s “Where’s the Beef” road rally. It was a blast. We left Urbana’s Farm and Fleet parking lot at 10:00 plus our car number and ODO legged out to Oakwood to start the rally. We went along all the wonderful roads around the Oakwood-Catlin-Westville area, finally driving by former club member and ralliest supreme Paul Trapp’s house as we entered “Grape Crick”, a great area south of Danville. From there we drove wonderful roads to the Newport, Indiana area, actually climbing the hill used in the Newport Hill Climb for antique cars before going to the Beef House near Covington, IN for lunch.
After lunch we stayed mostly on the north side of I-74 as we returned to Farm and Fleet. It was a blast.
Mike and Harold (mostly Mike) used “Protection” as a main road rule and I got to revisit that construct. I must say that the rallymasters used it as a teaching tool and I think I understand it better now than I ever have.
It was a great rally and if you didn’t run it, you missed a great one! Add to that the good lunch (2 hours of lunch!) and fellowship at the Beef House, and it was a day not to be missed. You autocrossers should explore CCSCC rallies. It was a grand time.
We have had lots of good events recently. They have been a lot of fun. The autocrosses at Coles County Airpot put on by Tom Ingles (with input by Nick Owens) were the best use of our expanding space at the airport I’ve seen yet. It was a hot, humid day and some of us needed to drink more water and keep our electrolytes up.
HISCC/CIR has had a great event, as usual, at Mossville. I ran for the first time and it was a blast! 85 cars in 3 heats. They have another event on Saturday, July 10 at Lincolnland Community College in Springfield. Lets support our friends from Peoria.
I am event chair for the July 17, 18 Autocrosses at the Rantoul Aviation Center. Please enter from the north end of the site as we are going to pit there for this event. We will be running on the pavement where we usually pit and grid. Air will be available at the usual location, but outside the fence.
Finally, we have our complete AXWare/T-link autocross timing system in hand now, including backup equipment. We will be transferring the autocross timing equipment owned by CIR/HISCC to Peoria effective July 10. We are purchasing 2 computers (giving CCSCC 3), so we will not need their computes either. Next year will will be independent of CIR/HISCC as we purchase another timing display to use with our timing system. We will no longer have to transfer equipment back and forth between Rantoul and Peoria.
Well, the year is going well. See you at events. Please remember that we will be voting on a CCSCC constitutional amendment and two amendments to the bylaws of the CCSCC constitution at the club meeting this coming Wednesday night (July 7), so please show up to vote. The amendments will change the constitution and bylaws to allow us to hold elections on the date the board chooses within some restrictions; allow more than spouses to get club membership discounts, and allow us to charge more than a dollar more for non-member entrant fees at our events. Currently we are doing all of these things, but that is in violation of the CCSCC constitution and we will have to return to the constitution’s restrictions if we don’t modify it. We think these were changed, which is why we are currently doing things the way we are, but can’t find any proof.
See you Wednesday night and at events!
Barry Rowe: CCSCC President AKA Barry Who