TeamD Adventures

Up here in the Northwest corner of the United States, June hosts the No Alibi rally, put on by the Rainier Auto Sports Club, to which a good number of TeamD members belong. Some of us participated in the rally while others were involved in the organization/running of the event. I will leave it to others to talk about keeping on time and on route as I was the designated scoring chauffeur(1). ———————————– (1) I drove Steve around the weekend so he could concentrate on gathering the scores and keeping the running totals up to date. He did a great job and once again Rainier was able to keep the scoring time to a minimum. (2) I’ve ordered another skid plate from Paul at Primitive Enterprises and this time I am going for the more substantial 3/16” thick model instead of the 1/8” I originally got.

Up early Sunday to check the Saab: no flats, started OK. 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.

Some people have a vision that road rallies are high brow events for pretty cars on pretty roads. And most important, this is a jacket that I don’t feel bad about bumping the dirty fender or mind laying on the ground in to inspect or fix the car.

If you havn’t heard about sick people on the 2008 Alcan maybe you were reading about some other alcan rally (perhaps you’re reading our 2004 blog). My last four days of this Alcan were experienced thru a coughing flu-ie haze. I still had a great time, I just whined more than usual. No one will admit to being the carrier who brought the disease on our little road trip. My suspicion is that it was a potent cocktail of cold and influenza strains from around the country. People who had already been sick this winter were not totally immune, although they did get away a lot easier than those of us who had kept our hankies clean this year. Ace navigator and member of the winning team, Russ Kraushaar got sick and had to miss the trip north to the edge of the continent. On the plus side, this is definitely the first Alcan Rally where i’ve lost weight. One thing’s for sure …

As everyday life starts to seep in the forefront, it’s hard not to try to relive parts of the trip. We really lucked out with the weather.