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. Novices Clawson and Hallquist won their class with 304.

We’ll make great Friday night rallymasters.

It’s the end of leg one (of three for today). Yours truely in car 4 seem to have third place well in hand.

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. 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.

The Alcan Rally made it to Tuktoyaktuk today.

We’ll get back on the updates from Whitehorse, Yukon.

".. I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation." -Melville Today our Pequod is a fabulious black BMW 325ix and our sails are full with a rowdy Beaufort Sea blow. But this is no excursion to harvest from the seas instead, a voyage of exploration. The last sign you see before getting onto the winter road to Tuk prohibits you from swimming in the area around the boat ramp. Another day in tourist mode is taking us on a roud trip from Inuvik to Tuktoyuktuk (Tuk) then halfway back down the Dempster highway to Eagle Plains. We launched down the ramp and made a right on the Makenzie river headed to the sea. The Mackenzie drains a big chunk of northern Canada west of the Rockies. Today it deposits us out on the Beaufort Sea where we follow a wide plowed path skirting the coast to Tuk (pop. 930) For safety all of the cars hav radios and the chater helps pass the time. Renee and her Florida accent was very quotable on the radio today. After lunch we’ll be heading back to Eagle Plains where we won’t hav Internet so the site will be quiet for a day or so.