TeamD Adventures

Marinus says,

First, my inner editor (who’d been shouting, “Yes, yes!” into my ear Wednesday night, but wouldn’t look me in the eye yesterday) demands some corrective flashbacks. So here are two tiny tweaks to the Saturday part of this story:

It wasn’t crazy fast. The speeds I’m talking about are in kilometers. “Twenty over” a 60 cast is 50 mph.  KMs are like Monopoly Miles.  The speeds chosen might have been predicated on less snow, but if you look at the detailed scores you’ll see that several teams had little trouble with ‘em.

The snow on Saturday’s sections required exceptional levels of concentration, from both of us. And for me, at least, more than the usual level of exertion. About ten minutes into the deep snow sections, the driving demands exceeded my upper body aerobic conditioning.  Here’s how I know: A short time after we passed the snowplow, my vision was closing in, the edges of my view graying out. Nope – I wasn’t passing out; I was just breathing so hard that the windshield was fogging. I panted out, “Need de-fog”, like a surgeon calling for sponges, and my co-driver cranked up the fan.
Hubris -10.

Right, where were we? Oh, yes, Sunday.
Sunday morning.
1 a.m. Sunday morning. That’s when we got to bed.

We weren’t up late waiting for scoring — provisional scores came out hours before, and we held second. We also weren’t celebrating overmuch, though we were very pleased with our performance. No, we were awake that late because our nervous systems were still overcharged.

Bbrriinngg! The alarm went off at 6:40. Our abbreviated rest period had us a little wary of what lay ahead. All the teams seem to run better the second day, so we needed to be sharp.

The first couple sections were snowy (are you surprised?), but the previous day’s training defused any fear of that. Oh, the roads were still slick, but not jaw-dropping, as OK Falls had been…

After the morning break, curving back to Merritt, the elevation was falling, and in equal measure the snow banks dissolved. It’d been warm enough to sublimate the crystals, but not warm enough to evaporate the resulting droplets. When we were out of the rocky foothills into the rolling ranchland, the roads weren’t wet: they were muddy.

I thought the snow was slippery. Hah! Compared to the slimy green-brown mud in the last two sections on Sunday, the snow bit like tarmac. The road was winding and sweeping over the ridges on the Douglas Lake Road. No snow meant no snowbanks, and after Saturday’s pinball session I actually missed those soft white guardrails.

So the routine became: turn the wheel; front tires push; car mildly slides; careful tweaking straightens us; and we’ve lost a couple hundredths. That went on for many minutes, while a creeping tension filled the cabin. I knew we were down; my co-driver knew we were down; what my co-driver didn’t know was I couldn’t get it back.

Bang! That was a control. The in-car silence afterward was funereal. And we were still down. Zap! Another control. I began grimly hoping that Winter Scoring’s grace period might actually pay off for us. Finally the muck thinned, and we caught up.

We passed the end of the last regularity, and headed out on the last transit back to Merritt. We were exhausted, and downfallen… the points we’d taken seemed huge. When we do well, it’s always as a result of good teamwork; and when we fall down, we try not to assign the blame within the team. But I’d seen the error on the driver’s display as we passed the controls, and those digits belonged to me.

It was Superbowl Sunday, still early in the game. The random cheering from other patrons confused my frazzled brain. We checked in at MTC, ate, and swapped tales, played secret agent to pry into how the teams around us ran. The spy reports did not build our confidence.

But you know what? We made the podium, in second place still. I walked around the corner from the dining area and exhaled, relieved, reassured, and totally, completely, spent. 17 points over two days, I can live with that. Back in ’07 we had 744 points.

How did that score improve so much? Easy answer — we’ve been hanging out with great TSD ralliers. There’s a long list of ‘em, from the Olson twins, the Saagers, Satchmo, Russ and R. Dale and Katy, Brandon & Jason, the Team D folks from Seattle, Kevin & Chris & Ben & the Tabors, the J.Zs … we’re surrounded by folks who “get” rally. They’re nice and helpful and sharing before and after the events — and they’ll press you past your limits when competing. We’re already looking forward to the next “brisk gravel rally” (and I’m working on my stamina).