TeamD Adventures

Mountains To The Sea (MTTS) is a long running touring rally, offered by the Cascade Sports Car Club in Portland. It is the middle offering in the ‘Triple Threat Weekend’, a multiple-event contest with a Friday night trap rally, MTTS on Saturday, and a rallycross on Sunday.

Saturday we were up bright and early. MTTS starts in South Portland, and heads out to the Pacific Ocean. We we ran it two years ago as novices, and won our class. MTTS 2006 was our first day-long rally, and played a large part in getting us interested in TSDs. This year, we ran in the Unlimited class - our first time with the box in this club. Although we’ve benefited from some great mentoring, and some good luck with the box on other rallies, we pretty much dorked this rally right from the start.

Cascades rallies generally use stop control style checkpoints, rather than passage controls. But this year, MTTS followed a more SCCA-style of touring rally, using passage controls and CZTs. The supplemental instructions outlined the procedure. It seemed pretty straightforward. Heh.

There were also these two notes:

Note: 3-2-1 GO - Rotate the CAST as you see “SCHOOL BUS STOP AHEAD”.

CSU 3

CSD 2

CSU 1

The rotation does not restart with a new leg.

Note: Back to School - Rotate the CAST as you see “SCHOOL BUS STOP AHEAD”.

CSU 3

CSD 2

CSU 1

The signs in the transit are included in the count. The rotation does not restart with a new leg. The signs encountered during the transits are applied to the first CAST in the next TSD leg.

Say what? A number of navigators’ brows furrowed at the notes. There wouldn’t be any pre-calculating, because the sign locations and counts aren’t known in advance. The 3-2-1 note was introduced at the start of the 1^st section, and cancelled at the end of the morning TSD, so it was effective all morning. The 2^nd note was introduced at the start of the 1^st afternoon TSD, and never cancelled.  It meant we were on a sign hunt pretty much the whole rally.

New tires on the car for this rally — so at the start of MTTS, our factor was WAY off. We hit the end of the tire warm-up, and confused the pre-marker sign for the sign marking the end of the warm-up. We went past the real sign in a one-way section of the Gee Creek Rest Stop. Ooops! We waited for cars to pass, and snuck back to begin the ODO calibration section in the right spot.

We headed to the first TSD, in La Center, keeping a sharp eye out for signs! The La Center TSD was short, with 2 CZTs. We saw 2 signs, so following the Note we CAST +3 then -2. The count of signs does not reset — so at the beginning of the next TSD, Green Mountain, we should do a +1 on the CAST if we see a sign. We saw 3 signs in TSD 2, with 2 CZTs. We already had a time dec and a missed turn under our belts…

Hmmm, something funny with instruction 59, ‘RIGHT AT STOP PAUSE .25 CAST 37 –CZT 11:48.66’

Where do you apply the PAUSE, given that you have a CZT?  It doesn’t make sense to add it before the CZT. Looked at the rules. Wasn’t clear what to do… the CZTs before had a built in pause, so why would it be there? Hmm.

There was a little pull out just after the turn, and we conferred, then agreed to add the PAUSE, after leaving the STOP at the CZT time. Next up is the transit to lunch, where we turned in our time allowances (yes, we picked up some more), and read the official time sheet.

OOHHHHHHH NOOOOOOO!!!!!! There were 4 signs in TSD 1 and 4 in TSD 2. Unfortunately, we missed the very 1^st sign. The result is that every CAST-at-sign after that was wrong. Because the CAST rolling doesn’t reset at TSD 2, we took those penalty points at each subsequent checkpoint. It doesn’t matter that we ‘reset’ at the CZT, we didn’t have the right CAST to start it. To complete the package, the .25 PAUSE was supposed to be added BEFORE the CZT (whatever that means).

We were so disheartened, we talked about retiring then; but there is a barbeque at the end, and we’d get to see some friends. So we continued. Continued to mess up, that is: We missed another sign in the 3^rd TSD, I confused 2 CZTs back to back and we blew right through the second one. It was so hopeless that we traded seats. My former driver, now navvie’ing, blew us through a CZT just like I did. We missed more signs. The penalties got worse and worse, because the sign count now incremented across the transit sections too. The CZT times weren’t adding up, but we were so rattled we didn’t notice.

The coup de grace was when we heard from other teams that  time allowances should be carried through the entire ½ day. We didn’t do that - we got back on our minute when we started a new leg. We took some points for that, then, in the morning. If we turned in our TAs for the afternoon, we’d take points in the last 2 TSDs, if we don’t turn them in we take points in the first 3. We toss the TA sheet. We’re sunk.

The barbeque was north of Astoria on the Columbia River. The weather was warm and sunny unlike last year’s rally where it was rainy and cold.

In the end, sections 3, 12 were thrown. Times were adjusted for 5, 6, 11. The scorers were very gracious and adding our time declarations as if we’d reset between TSDs. They even took our tossed TA. The.25 pause penalty was dropped for the affected cars. Still, we finished last (6^th) in the UNLIMITED class and behind all the Masters class in 9^th place overall with a score of 244.

Perpetual winners Russ and Katy Kraushaar won with a score of 9. The Sorems won Masters with a score of 111. SOP won by MacDugall and Steve Smith with a score of 293. Novices Clawson and Hallquist won their class with 304.

We’ll make great Friday night rallymasters. We can make a trap out of anything!

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 6^th 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.

ORCA hosted the fifth running of the touring rally Sno-Git last Saturday. As you might guess from the name, it started at Marysville, in Snohomish County, and wound its way up through Warm Beach, Lakewood, Sylvania, Stanwood, Bryant, La Conner, Mount Vernon, and Oak Harbor before winding up in Anacortes, at the tip of Skagit County. It was free of traps, mostly free of traffic, and full of sweet roads and magnificent scenery.

Seventeen teams made the start this year, and our early e-mail registration had earned us the #1 slot. But a mix-up of some kind delayed the registrar’s arrival on site, and as a result the route books weren’t distributed until the driver’s meeting was underway. We’re not comfortable running without some pre-calculated time checks, so having some time with the route book before the start is non- negotiable. Still, deadlines are deadlines — and we left on the odo transit just about on our minute, with the navigator still furiously calculating and swearing under her breath. RRRIIIPP! went the transit instructions from the route book, and my driver tasked to run the transit without my help. He uttered an occasional, “Oh, I know this area; we’re turning on Firetrail Rd.” to reassure me.

Still, I was barely able to calculate the section times before the beginning of the first regularity, Section #2. Even with the absence of traps, the TSD sections seemed more technical than last year. Nearly every instruction had a CAST, sometimes with a very small increment; and there were far more turns and pauses than in Sno-Git IV. Last year’s rally saw a three-way tie for First Overall, and I suspect the rally master was cranking up the difficulty a notch to get some spread in the scores. All the navigators must have been busy in this one. Nevertheless, Section #2 went well with no mistakes, slow cars or surprises. The threat of “not enough time for calcs” turned out ok.

The next regularity, Section #4, didn’t go so well. Oh, we managed to miss the bulk of the riders in the cycling event in the Stilliguamish flats, and never saw the freight train that stopped other teams — but it was our turn for mishaps. We missed the last DIYC sign, located ½ mile before the end of the section, and didn’t realize it until we reached that end. We could have guessed at the DIYC time, but we’d not passed any controls in that last half mile, so we spun about and buzzed back to the previous turn, passing car #2… #3… and #4. We wheeled about at the turn again, frantically adjusted the computer, and tore off in the right direction again. If you’re wondering, “Yes, there was a major moment of tension in the car.” But we found the sign, and cut a TA, and it all turned out ok.

The subsequent transit was short, and the time allotted for it was tight even without our delay. We arrived at the out cone for Section #6 more than two minutes past our out time. We pulled in front of car 4 and left ½ minute before they would. I quickly recalculated all the reference times for the upcoming section. We were slightly rattled, but it seemed things were back to normal. Then, at the last turn instruction in the regularity, I CAST at the turn, then activated LAST CAST + ADJUST ORM to correct the mileage. For some unexplained reason, while still holding LAST CAST, I then hit TRUNCATE. This invoked an undocumented feature (bug?) of the box. It advanced the last CAST point to the point where TRUNCATE was depressed. At least that’s what I think happened now. At the time I thought: NOOOOOO!

My driver said excitedly, “Something is wrong. I’m now 20 hundredths down”.

“Just drive the ..expletive deleted… CAST until I…CHECKPOINT!” There was marked quietness in the car. “Well, we’re out of the running. Let’s just try for some zeros the rest of the day.”

At the break, the rally master collected our DIYC and TA sheets. He said was accepting all time allowances because of the bikes and trains on the course, so we didn’t have to try to justify our “missed sign” TA. Hey, a small break! And more: Car #2 reported that, since they’d run as lead car for section 6, they were first to encounter a group of people and dogs and children and puppies and leashes and big wheels… god knows what else… spread fully athwart the road and stunned into immobility by the arrival of one of those new-fashioned motor carriages! The rural folks had stopped Car #2 very near the spot where we had the TRUNCATE problem a few minutes later. Car #2 was down 10 seconds once they got past the congregation, and CHECKPOINT! We realized that, had we been in the lead car, we’d have been the motor carriage that amazed the road blockers. So my bobble was not as bad as it could have been (4L in the end), had we been in the car #1 slot. It all turned out ok.

After the break, the route went up the slough, down the Skagit river, and across the fields to La Conner. After more curves and lovely views, we traveled over the Deception Point bridges to Whidbey Island for the last handful of regularities. The rest of the rally was uneventful. The final transit brought us to Anacortes and the pizza parlor, to wait for scoring. We knew we were out of the running, but we wanted to stick around and see how our friends did. ORCA’s tech folks did a spiffy job of getting the provisional scores up on a projector for easy viewing.

Our score was 918, but our TA had not been applied. The low score was 22, held by the Mannistos in car #11. Once our TA went in, our score dropped unbelievably to 22 as well.

OH, YES! Hey, we’re tied for first with car #11! OH, NO! A tie breaker, just like last year: highest number of 0s, 1s, 2s, etc. then earliest entry. Hee-Hee. Good thing I registered us in March.

We counted zeroes: 5 for us, 5 for them. Counted ones: we had one more. However, the last 2 passage control scores had not been posted. We waited anxiously. The last two controls came in — and we still matched scores with car 11 exactly. Now our scores were 26. There was a final call for inquiries….

Oh wait, a TA is missing for car #17.

Once the TA was applied, Car #17’s score dropped to 23. Smiling hugely, Ron Sorem and Max Vaysburg took first place, unlimited and overall (yeah!) with their new computer. We held onto second, benefitting from the tie-breaker. Steve Perret and Kathryn Hansen took first SOP, and Tom Daily and Mike Palidar took first Equipped. It all turned out ok.

This past weekend we participated in the Rally Against Parkinson’s held by the Oregon Rally Group.

The SCCA rally started with 2 regularity laps around Portland International Raceway, with the top speed limited to 75mph. Cars started every 30 seconds, and workers along the way timed cars as they went by. The goal was to match times on the second lap at each point. As with previous years, the rallymaster accepted bids for starting positions. Because no passing is allowed on the track, starting position #1 is much desired. This year, spot #1 elicited a $150 donation.

We drove the Mustang on this rally. During the first regularity lap, the Mustang’s tires squealed around every curve — and there was a pretty lurid slide, too. Much to our dismay, while lining up for lap #2, we discovered that the rear passenger side wheelcover was missing. Now these aren’t the wheelcovers that came on the car; rather, we found them on craigslist. The seller discovered them in an attic, where they had been stored, and then forgotten for over 40 years. We still have the ones that came on this car, but they aren’t in nearly as good condition. So we went on, with one wheel exposed:

  Hmmm, looks like this negative was flipped R-to-L somehow. I guess.  

The regularity laps were followed by a traditional TSD rally and a BBQ. The TSD portion consisted of 2 sections, then a break in Vernonia, followed by 2 more sections. There were a few tense moments encountering a number of slow moving vehicles on the course including a hay truck, several Sunday drivers (although it was Saturday), and a few lost drivers. 

The roads leaving Vernonia were rain slickened, steep and curvy. The rear wheel drive Mustang, on its “optional wide tires” (195/75-14) was a handful. At one point we were 25 hundredths down, with little hope of making it up. We took a time declaration instead, and found out later that we weren’t the only ones: even the S2000 wanted for traction in there. 

The rally had a great turnout. 34 teams participated in the rally, with 20 of the teams in the Novice class! In the end, the rally raised over $4000 for charity. Brandon Harer and Logan Rosenstiel in car #1 came in first with a score of 11. April Smith and Marcus Song came in second with a score of 15. We came in third with a 16.

Oh, and the missing wheelcover? A course worker found it and returned it at the BBQ.

Last year, we borrowed a ‘74 Triumph TR6 to run the CGMGA Classic Car Rally. Only sports-y cars made earlier than 1981 can enter. Our own vintage car was in the midst of a 15 month restoration project last year — but now the exterior work is finished. Although the interior still has much to be done, the car is ready to rally, or so we thought.

Last weekend we drove it to Olympia for a family birthday party, just to put some miles on it. (In the last year fewer than 20 miles were put on the car.) On the way home, we pulled off the freeway to get gas. At the stop sign, we noticed it was awful quiet inside. The motor wasn’t running, and it wouldn’t start.

We pushed it away from the stop sign, and opened the hood. Within 2 minutes, 2 cars had stopped: ‘Need any help?’. No, we thanked them and waved them away. There was fuel coming out of the vent pipe like an old style percolator. Hmm. It’s probably flooded. Heh. It’s v. v. flooded.

We started the car, got gas, and hit the freeway, this time with a fire extinguisher in the co-driver’s lap. We made it home to Portland and used the last light of the June day to pull the float bowl. The problem: either the nitrophyl float was saturated and sinking, or the float level was too high. Even after we replaced the float, gas still poured from the sight hole while the motor idled.

We cranked the wet float setting WAAAYYYY down past the dry setting. The excess fuel seems to be under control… our fingers are crossed that’s the only mechanical issue we’ll see.
pssst! see the ‘D’ sticker?

Update:   The car ran well during the rally, good enough for 3rd place overall.  The gas problem seems to be fixed.   The next outing will be the Rally Against Parkinson’s which includes a pair of regularity runs around PIR.