TeamD Adventures

Friday night was unseasonably warm. My first trip to the car Saturday morning said so; descending the stairs from the second floor balcony at the hotel, I heard the sounds of escaping water in the downspouts. The roof’s snow cap was disappearing.

We went to breakfast, early, so as to stay out of the crush later. The short drive to and from the Coldwater Cafe brought out our sunglasses. With temperatures up, I bled off a bit less air from our BMW’s tires than I’d planned to – since rocks and potholes now seemed more likely than rivers of snow. By start time, Reid was walking about without a jacket. Our own AlCan-spec coats and pants stayed stuffed in their bags.

At 4:00 p.m. on Saturday, we’d been through three full sections… and no snow. We weren’t having much trouble holding the CAST, and we expected others weren’t, either. At The Thunderbird, both Unlimited cars and Historic cars run full computers, which meant that a dozen cars might then share our score. Perhaps even that estimate was low: no less than ten cars carried at least one past winner, and the hungry not-yet-winners with A-boxes filled a half-dozen more. Unless something changed, and quickly, the first day’s scores would be shockingly (someone said unnaturally) low.

Two things changed.

The first was perfectly predictable. Our GPS, stuck to the dash in front of the co-driver for its occasional hints about hairpins, steadily ticked up in elevation. 900 meters. 1100 meters. 1370 meters. 1604 meters. Climbing, we found snow. But it wasn’t widespread, and not too deep, and the roads were not too icy underneath. Some new was falling, medium-sized flakes out of a concrete sky.

The second thing that changed turned the rally … into a rout. Within minutes, less than half an hour, certainly, the wind had come up. It pressed on the trees, steady, and firm, and inescapable. It constrained whatever it touched, and captured whatever was loose. Sprigs of evergreens stripped from branches tumbled along the road. The falling snow marshaled into channels, and crashed in wintry rapids. Wherever the ground gave shelter, broad streamlined drifts were forming. Banks of snow in the air, thick as pea soup, moved over us and instantly blotted out our surroundings, then moved on as suddenly as they’d come. Dusk was approaching, though to this point we’d not turned up our lights.

A little breezy

We were the second competitor car on the course, and naturally we were monitoring the rally’s HAM frequency. Car One called, “Rallymaster stuck”, just before we arrived. Along a slight hill, an oblique drift was erasing the road, and the front-wheel-drive Car Zero hadn’t made it through. It took a quarter-hour to pull him down, and break trail sufficiently with higher rigs to proceed. During this exercise, the blizzard got its footing; and thus braced, its power forced us to abandon the section.

Rallymaster, standing in front of his extracted car, hoping the Forester can break through the drift

Our return to the highway coincided with nightfall. The succeeding transit down to Merritt (for gas before the final section) had the tenor of a full-scale retreat. Perverse mechanical maladies appeared; broken wipers, shorted alternators, flickering taillights, sputtering engines, pulling brakes. Bands of wounded cars limped through the slush and, lower, standing water toward the service station. Some went single-file, and some went three abreast – but since the lane markers were obscured, we drove wherever we could. It was rush hour in Naples.

The organizers kept their senses, though, and were counting noses. Before long everyone was accounted for – but by this time, it was getting late. Kamloops, the overnight stop, was still 80km away, and the storm was coming after us. Rather than send 50 cars southeast again, up toward the lodge of the Snow King, the last section was canceled. Heading for the hotel and banquet spot, we diced with fearless semis and eased past petrified minivans, and made… good time … to Kamloops.

After dinner, we saw the day’s preliminary scores. The low end of the scale was packed. The trail-breaking Forester, with multiple past winner Glenn Wallace driving and R. Dale Kraushaar navigating, had 0 points for the entire day.

Next, a pair of Historic cars each had 1 point — and each of those cars had broken at least once by Saturday night. Another pair, Unlimiteds, including last year’s winners, sat at 2. Then FIVE cars at 3 points. And so on… Most couldn’t quite wrap their minds around it. “We’re only 4 points off the lead!” “Yeah… that’s ten places.”

Renee noticed one team conspicuous by their absence from the single-digit region. Thunderbird first-timer Larry LeFebvre, driving for past winner Brandon Harer, had 300+ points. “Yep, we went off”, admitted Larry. Fair enough; they weren’t the only ones. But Renee saw something else: a certain twinkle in Brandon’s eye. We’ve seen it before.

Thunderbird had 49 cars (wow!).  The sheer number of people, combined with our early arrival, and the close proximity of the hotel, meant we had the time and the inclination to work on the restaurant’s stock of refreshments – ’til they ran out of beer.  Back to the hotel, where rooms on every floor stood open for more hospitality. Most folks were asleep by midnight, though, and up early for Sunday’s 8 a.m. start.

The tireless organizers finished scoring overnight, incorporating the time decs that the preliminary scores hadn’t. The corrections showed another tie existed. Brandon and Larry matched Glenn & R. Dale, point for point. Errr, or no-point for no-point. The loss of Saturday’s checkpoints might be blamed — but these experts run so well they might’ve sailed through even the blizzard cleanly. With just four sections to run on Sunday, only very difficult conditions or gross errors could push these teams apart — if neither occurred, some complex tie-breaking seemed inevitable.

But the roads on Sunday ran lower, and the skies were clear. Some folks went off Sunday, but not the front-runners. T-Bird’s last chance to give out big points fell along with a monstrous fir. The tree blocked the road, and the reroute skipped the best (by that I mean worst) part of the final section. In Merritt, the rallymaster reported, with a mix of surprise and accomplishment, that everyone had finished.  I got the sense that this was a first; in each of the preceding 23 years, at least one DNF occurred.

We still had two cars at 0. The leaders, all four of them, are gentlemen and good sports, too. They all seemed a bit embarrassed to argue that they should prevail over a competitor with the same null score. Normal tie breakers fail under this kind of pressure, and The Thunderbird’s failed. But I think the right answer was reached.

Time-Speed Distance rallies are contests of precision. The superior team is that which demonstrates greater precision, as measured by a lower score. Alas, these two teams perfected precision. So much so that their skills exceeded the rally’s ability to measure them. As odd as it sounds, The Thunderbird’s challenges of time, and speed, and distance were insufficient to indicate the superior team.

The organizers, a bit spooked, tried to apply a higher standard of precision to the existing measurements. But once the vessel’s empty, once the spirits are exhausted, gazing at its drying walls will not bring forth new insights on the quality of the contents. At best, we measure memories, impressions of that substance that is no more. Once the graduated cylinder of precision is empty, the rally’s intrinsic power to anoint the better team has failed. Trying to cleave more and more finely through segments is futile once the kerf is wider than the slice. At that point, you’re just making hash.

When we can no longer discriminate by precision, we must find another measure. It can’t be something internal to the rally; that yardstick’s spent. What can take up the task, then, when precision’s discrimination is too crude? I’ll tell you: it’s difficulty on the road.

For instance, suppose a Calculator class car and an Unlimited class car have the *same* score on a TSD rally. The teams’ precision is equal, by definition: scores are how we measure precision. But which is the superior team? Is it not the team that faced more difficulty, the Calculator car? Their achievement has more substance, does it not? Who will deny that the Calculator team is superior?

What about two teams at the same score, but one’s done the job despite a vehicle deficiency? (like two wheel drive; but I digress…)

Or two teams at 0 points — and one team’s gone off, but dug themselves out, and get moving again, and despite pounding hearts and sweating brows, blasts through the rest of the section at exactly Car 0 plus their number plus TimeDec minutes?

The point is — for teams which have identical scores  — which team had it harder?  Doesn’t that signify something? Remember, we’re already past splitting hairs, these two are tied up tighter’n a constrictor band at steering day.*

Back to Sunday afternoon… there was a hasty decision on the winner, based on a penalty for use of a time dec — but the steward vetoed that easy answer, as the time dec rules were clear and no penalty was due. Instead, a “more precise” timing method revealed the team that was “cleaner longer” than all other teams, and Larry and Brandon, were crowned as Overall Winners of The Thunderbird.

It’s the right answer, according to my “more difficulty on the road” tiebreaker, because they did go off… and yet came back to zero both days.

The Thunderbird is one of the great rallies of our time. Next year is the rally master’s Silver Anniversary. Watch for it to be announced in 2012 — and let’s make it a sellout of 60 cars.

* yes, I’m betting most folks won’t get that.