The Road Not Taken – 2008
Aug
2008
The Road Not Taken ’08 was the first running of this rally in five years. In the past, it was held during a full moon, but due to conflicts with other rallies this year, it went off under a new moon. The additional darkness came in handy… I guess. TRNT is one of the PCC rallies for 2008.
TRNT started in McMinnville, OR, at 7 p.m. on a Saturday, and finished at around 5:45 a.m. Sunday. Twenty-four teams participated. Route books were handed out just 30 minutes prior to the start of the opening transit, by car number, which left not much time for the codrivers to precalculate. The rallymaster promised that the rally would be “hard on navigators”, and it was, in several ways. The route crossed the Coast Range to the Pacific Ocean, then doubled back, ending again in McMinnville.
The initial transit (Section 0) covered a number of the roads that our tandem bike rally routes used, and as that was just one month before, some turns were familiar. Less comfortable was the style of the timing controls. TRNT departed from the traditional gravel-rally passage control style, and had checkpoints instead. At each checkpoint, there was an automatic 2-minute pause. Arriving at the workers’ car, we handed over a checkpoint slip (optionally declaring our arrival time), then they returned the slip with their measured time. They also provided a cue sheet with the perfect CZT and mileage for the control.
For the most part, there were no transits between timed sections. One timed section finished, to be followed immediately by the next timed section. At least 80% of the course included timed sections.
The one big rest break came at Spirit Mountain Casino, in Section 4, aptly named ‘Oasis’. Several navigators were green at this point — and it wasn’t due to the lighting at the gas station. The break was long enough for April Smith to win $300 at the slot machines.
Section 7, ‘Swashbuckler’, offered a stunning view of the Milky Way. We’d see it again at the short doughnut and coffee break in section 12, ‘3am…Nevada…Highway 50’.
About section 9, ‘Wicked Witch’: I’m not saying that my driver made a mistake in that section, but one of us made a mistake. And I did not make a mistake… Coming down a 17% grade, with a 50% grade drop off on the exposure, and lots of warnings in the route book, the CAST dropped from 20 to 18, with a .25 PAUSE thrown in for good measure. The road was steep, covered with gravel, and we began to creep ahead of time. Of course there was the requisite checkpoint at the bottom. To our dismay, we arrived a full 30 hundredths early, and took as many points. 
The Leg 10, ‘Jungle’, CZT was erroneous. It was later adjusted, but at the point we encountered it, we were both weary, and unable to make sense of the numbers. We adjusted the box to match the checkpoint slip, but then on the next CZT, we were off by the same amount — but in the other direction. Time Declaration? Just drive! Leg 11, ’20,000 Parsecs Over the Sea’, in the end was tossed.
The city lights we spotted after the doughnut break to the east turned out to be the beginnings of the sunrise. Now that’s staying out late.
Leg 13, ‘End of the Road’, looked like it would be scored in the route book, but the LEFT at SIGNAL without a pause gave it away as a transit. Back at rally headquarters, we checked in and stuck around for a while, then headed home for some shut-eye. Marinus only fell asleep once on the drive home. Several D’ers followed suit, heading to our house, and not falling asleep. After a few hours’ rest, we were joined by the Horst family for some breakfast.
The winners in Equipped were Jason Webster and Brandon Harer, with a score of 23; in Limited were Jason and Vanessa Stokes, with 180; leading SOP were Bruce Tabor and John Elkin at 289.
As for Team D, Jeff and Marvin took second place overall with a score of 26. Niiice. And though they were running with only half a computer, Dan and Hans came 4th with 39 points. We were tied with Ben Bradley and Russ Kraushaar at 54 points — the tiebreaker was “sum of squares”, and we dropped to 6th place overall.
The rallymaster promises to hold the rally again in 2010. We’ll be going back: It’s a tough rally for both driver and navigator, but well worth the exertion.
