Rally Report – Friday the 13th Comes On a Friday This Year (2014)

Date: Friday, June 13, 2014
Rallymaster: Barry Rowe
Cold run: Jerry White
Workers: Jerry White

Download a PDF of the results: Click Here

Seven brave rally teams left the Subaru of Champaign County showroom at 7:30 on Friday the 13th of June for the “Friday the 13th Comes on a Friday This Month” rally. We started early so we would not have darkness to deal with. It
worked out well, as we were just pulling into the ending point (Monical’s Pizza on Mattis Ave. and Church Street in Champaign) when it got dark. We had a good turnout and, I hope, a good time was had by all.

I couldn’t help but name the event after one of the few Friday the 13ths that happen every few years. As a great bit of side interest, it was also a full moon, which, in combination with Friday the 13th is really rare and will probably not
happen again in any of our lifetimes!

The rally went towards St. Joe where there are such nice roads and a checkpoint where the St. Joe — Sidney road turns west. Then it went south a mile, turned west and went through the best set of turns in Champaign County before starting
a march command that took the rallyists almost to Philo with no more instructions. After a turn west again, there was a phantom checkpoint and a long, straight road to get west of Champaign with a turn north to another march command that took the rallyists to checkpoint 3, held in my favorite checkpoint location on the old Illinois Terminal railroad right of way on Illinois route 47 extended south of Illinois Route 10. A final DIY leg going into the ending point and we were done.

There were 4 legs plus 100 points for opening a panic capsule, which no one did. There was an automatic delay allowance so no one who didn’t miss a checkpoint could get more than 49 points. The results are below and it was very competitive. Note how close Nav class was and that Bob and Karen Townsend would have won if they had been 0.01 minute later….. Thanks to Jerry White for cold running the rally, helping with checkpoints (actually, he is a checkpoint expert and showed it!) and generally doing as much as I did for this rally. Thanks also to Gary Patrick and Subaru of Champaign for allowing us to start the rally at their showroom.

One more thing…… I had some questions on the final outslip about where the title of this event comes from. It was from the long running comic strip by Walt Kelley called “Pogo”, an opossum who lived in the Okefenokee swamp in Florida and Georgia. My wording was not as good as it could have been, and I awarded the prize (a book of Walt Kelley’s Pogo Cartoons) to Bob Townsend because he answered the question I meant to ask. However, Russ Bedford answered the question I actually asked, so there is another copy of the book on the way for Russ.

Thanks for attending my rally. It was fun to put on.