TeamD Adventures

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. 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.

Pics are on my Flickr page The Oregon 1000 rally was loads of fun. I have to add a caveat to what I used to say about paved rallies. This one was far from boring. Incredible roads with very brisk speeds, and a complete lack of the event “lawyering” observed on previous SCCA events. While we didn’t bring home any hardware, the memories from the trip are worth more. Yes that sounds trite, but this event was well worth the effort invested — more so than many other rallies I’ve experienced. and nabbed second overall and second in Equipped class. Steve Perret and Kathryn Hansen were the remaining WA entries. Hans and I were the remaining Equipped entry and got third overall. Our own timing error had us get max points on a leg and put us out of the running for first place. However on the third day we managed to repeat day one’s score, except with twice as many checkpoints, so we experienced excellent progress. Congrats to the winners: Stock (Paper/SOP) Class: Paul Eklund, Kala Rounds, R.

Hans and I are doing the Oregon 1000 SCCA rally. We’re sitting in second overall, four points behind April Smith and Marcus Song in the Mitsubishi Outlander that we’ll be seeing on Alcan. Should be getting a few good whoops and hollers on the jet boat today.

Most of the TSD rallies we Team D folks participate in are touring style. The style we usually discuss, consisting of gravel (and snow and ice and the occasional tarmac) roads, long days, many miles, and very specific copious route instructions whose purpose is to keep you on the correct road. Our fourth leg score of 9 was actually valid. We caught the trap(s) and while I wavered all over the place with the speedometer, we kept it together reasonably well. Shockingly enough, our score was good enough to net us a first in class and indeed the best non-unlimited score of the evening.

Saturday October 6 saw three TeamD cars converge on Snoqualmie Pass for the 2007 running of Night on Bald Mountain. Held every year by ORCA, this one day, usually night, event brings rallyists from the region and gravel together in what usually signifies the start of the fall/winter season. Start time this year was 6pm so the majority of the event was in the dark. It’s times like these where I really enjoy the big PIAA driving lights I mounted on the front of the car. With those lit, the path ahead is much clearer. I can’t even imagine how I coped without them the first few years. The route took us up into the cascade mountains and looped us through the starting location (the Family Pancake House at the pass) at mid-break for gas. Despite the cold snap the previous week, there was no snow on the ground. There was, however, mud, as rain followed us most of the evening. ” times are right, we started losing time and gaining points. We exited regularity 6 with 29 points. Ick. Now, being conscientious rallysts, we noted our error (after the fact) and noted the location of the checkpoints so the next time through that route, regularity 8, we applied add-hock corrections on the way up the hill and finished the same drive with a much more reasonable 10. Eric and Steve in car 1 (they won last year) came in second overall and second in Unlimited class with a 28, 9 behind winners Ben Bradley and Russ Kraushaar. In reality, Eric and Steve tied third place finishers April Smith and Marcus Song who also finished with a 28 but were awarded 2nd by tiebreaker (most zeros, 8 versus 4). Joe and I came in third in our class (equipped) and 10th overall with a 67. Dan and Hans finished fifth overall and in class (unlimited) with a 44.