Saturday July 2, 2011

One team from Indianapolis, 3 from the Champaign area and one from Belleville all congregated at the Valero station in Covington Indiana bright and early on Saturday July 2. Eight miles away was the endpoint of the event, however, straight lines were few and far between in Roamin’ Candle. The prairie was left behind as the teams left Lodi, our entrance to Parke County and found Covered Bridges, gravel roads with multiple switch backs going up and down hill, Amish Buggies and of course, organic fertilizer. Chuck Hanson admitted that we had found roads in the county that were even new to him.

Everyone was caught by a trap on Leg 2 and missed driving through 2 of the Covered Bridges on the route. All arrived in a timely fashion at the lunch break at the Rock Run Café in Roseville (population less than 50). The restaurant let us have the “loft” room for our lunch. Unfortunately, Brian Grable missed lunch dealing with a not so slow leaking tire.

Paul and Marta DeMerath from Belleville had some difficulties with the course and won the award for being first to the end point and first in Novice. Basil Aruin was driving in his first Rally and was teamed with Bill Wagner and finished first in SOP with only 165 points on the 6 legs that didn’t trap them into a max. Ted Drummond and Chuck Hanson took first in Navigation class, without Chuck’s Rally Computer. Chuck was using our event as practice for the upcoming National event in St. Louis and was busily pounding away on a calculator.

The Rallymasters want to thank all that attended and hope they enjoyed the event.

Mike Blackwelder, Karen Davis & Harold Davis

Saturday June 11, 2011

As one of the new-this-year series of Saturday morning rallies geared especially for folks with no or limited rally experience the Time of the Signs Road Rally was planned from day one to be very easy to run. As the name of the rally may imply I did this by quoting a sign for almost every turn or speed change. You can see from the results above that fully half of the participants fit into the limited experience category and made up the rally’s largest class. Unfortunately I may have inadvertently influenced the final results in that class by accidentally “stealing” the Devlin’s instructions at the second checkpoint.

After crossing the checkpoint 2 in line and parking Bob brought all of his instructions and checkpoint slips back to the checkpoint vehicle because he wanted some assistance in claiming a delay for the leg. Unfortunately in the process of sorting out how much of a delay he wanted to claim I ended up laying his instructions down on my lapboard. About the time he was ready to head out on the last leg of the rally he realized he was missing them. Unfortunately by then I had already packed up the checkpoint and taken off to beat the first car to the last checkpoint. That left Bob and Pam with nothing to do but head for Monical’s to meet up with everyone else for lunch.

Tom Ingles says he owes me one for that goof since he thinks it helped him get second in the SOP class. That may be true but it also may not since the Devlin’s would have had to get a 60 or less on the 28 minute long last leg in order to have beat Tom and his mom. A 60 or less would certainly have been doable by an experienced SOP rallyist but it would not have been a sure thing so who’s to say if the Devlin’s could have done it. In any case both Bob and I have learned from this that it’s best if checkpoint crews only handle the pieces of paper that are required for them to do their jobs and and nothing more.

Meanwhile note that Eric and Greg (on their second rally together) ended up with a score that would have been very competitive in the SOP class. Also note that except for Jon and Gary’s 7 on leg 2 the Navigational class would have been extremely competitive. I understand that they didn’t fully recover from Jon accidentally working toward repeating doing the first instruction out of checkpoint 1. As for the DeMeritts their only point came while they were trying to get back on time after slowing to negotiate the corner just before checkpoint 2. I’m sure glad I borrowed Mike Blackwelder’s car and thousandth’s reading rally odometer to measure the rally. Thanks Mike!

Except for dips back and forth across the valley of the Sangamon River the rally spent most of its time near the tops of Yankee Ridge and Blue Ridge in Champaign County. This afforded the participants that took the time to look great views in all directions of mile after mile of young corn and soybean fields. Unfortunately in spite of the fact that I set the average speeds about 5 miles per hour slower than I normally would have just so that folks could look at the landscape (and to be friendly toward newcomers) at least one driver said he didn’t have time to do anything but watch the road ahead for his next turn. In any case Brian Ford, my cold runner and checkpoint helper, did enjoy the views. Thanks Brian, on all counts.

Jerry White, Rallymaster

Russ Bedford, Rallymaster

Sunday May 15, 2011

Bob Townsend, Rallymaster