TeamD Adventures

This is a test. This is only a test.

That’s what I had to tell myself while rounding the back turn of the Gold Pan race course in Quesnel this morning. The track conditions were very bumpy hard snow, and going off course here wouldn’t be nearly as forgiving as our our practice runs last month on the frozen lake. Snowbanks were window-high on the car here, and the course was pretty narrow.
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WRX fun:

Car 7 starts:

We didn’t wear shorts

Soggy was the start of our first day. The drive to Kirkland was brief but after a late night getting the last few essentials into the car, we were feeling as if we’d been going for hours. The prospect of embarking on this rally had us excited, though. The start location at the Silver Cloud Inn showed us a parking lot packed with rally and support vehicles anxious to get going. Family and friends of TeamD were on hand to cheer and pass out homemade cookies (greatly appreciated). Cars departed on their number/minute after 0800. We went against the flow of rush hour traffic and quickly made the 90 miles to the beginning of the first scored TSD section with plenty of time to spare. The section we drove was reminiscent of the rally we just did last month — in fact it was identical if memory serves. At least, some of the checkpoint locations seemed familiar. We had no problems crossing hte border; our favorite Canadian Customs question was “Are you carrying more than $10,00 cash?” TeamD has a lof of support, but not to that level. Yet.
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Driver’s meeting and Tech Inspection was held today in Bothell. All 16 teams were on hand to hear advice, rules, stories of Alcan rallies past and to have their vehicles inspected to ensure safety and compliance.
Car numbers aren’t passed out until the paperwork (licenses, registration and insurance) is checked and verified. Tech inspection makes sure that there are no loose items in the engine compartment and no obvious flaws with the vehicle as well as ensuring that safety items like triangles and a tow strap are present and that there’s an installed radio that will work on the official event frequency. Turns out there are quite a few ham radio folks in the event so that will give us gabby types more to do on the long transits.

Of course, we had no problems and neither did the Horst/Willey BMW. Rob and Nick are going to have some extra work tonight, mostly installing a stereo. We’re finishing packing the car and have had visits and phone calls from friends wishing us luck. Now if we can get a good night’s sleep, we’re off at 8 am tomorrow!

Two TeamD cars spent some quality indoor time today in the TeamD Vinyl Tech Application Center (V-TAC) in Lake Forest Park, Washington. Thanks to our great sponsors we had a difficult time choosing where decals would be applied as well as getting back in practice for getting the dang things to line up properly and not get messed up.
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