Day 2 Oregon 500/500
Jun
2009
Up early Sunday to check the Saab: no flats, started OK. We were ready to roll.
Sunday’s route was far different from Saturdays and last year’s. Sure, there were some great paved country roads and short gravel sections to start, but then about mid-morning, the roads began to look familiar — and not in a comforting way. The course began to follow some sections from the ’2008 The Road Not Taken’ rally.
We started to worry. We remembered the rally-ready cars that that TRNT broke. Worry turned into perspiration and then cursing. When we came upon a section with huge potholes that spanned the road, that was enough. We called it quits, not wanting to become the 4th DNF. We headed for pavement and home.
This year’s 500 illustrated the paradox of the rally format: are you to bring the worst car possible, and let the rocks fall where they may? A couple teams did, the best(?) example being the $100 Toyota. Or are you to bring the nicest car possible, and try to preserve it? In this camp have to be the two XJ-6s, as well as a v. v. nice&shiny RX-7. Before you suspect that the rallymaster let the fools rush in where angels fear to tread, note that his was the nicer of the Jags. He wasn’t tip-toeing.
So the 500′s a mystery to me. I thought I understood it last year, but just when you think you’ve got the rally game figured out, there’s a new twist.
