TeamD Adventures

Friday night was unseasonably warm. My first trip to the car Saturday morning said so; descending the stairs from the second floor balcony at the hotel, I heard the sounds of escaping water in the downspouts. The roof’s snow cap was disappearing. We went to breakfast, early, so as to stay out of the crush later. The short drive to and from the Coldwater Cafe brought out our sunglasses. With temperatures up, I bled off a bit less air from our BMW’s tires than I’d planned to – since rocks and potholes now seemed more likely than rivers of snow. By start time, Reid was walking about without a jacket. Our own AlCan-spec coats and pants stayed stuffed in their bags. At 4:00 p.m. on Saturday, we’d been through three full sections… and no snow. We weren’t having much trouble holding the CAST, and we expected others weren’t, either. At The Thunderbird, both Unlimited cars and Historic cars run full computers, which meant that a dozen cars might then share our score. The Thunderbird is one of the great rallies of our time. Next year is the rally master’s Silver Anniversary. Watch for it to be announced in 2012 — and let’s make it a sellout of 60 cars.

(Dan’s photos are here) (Warwick’s photos here , and Event web site will have results and links) First I want to thank co-driver Hans for all the help prepping the car. After doing such dirty jobs as installing the power steering pump and bathing in PS fluid, he went on to navigate us to the smallest amount of points we have ever scored on a two day event. Well, it would have been the smallest score … 48 cars entered the event and all finished. I think that may be a first. Of those who went into a snow bank or ditch, all were extracted with little or no damage. Probably the most harrowing experience was had by the Sonnet and 240Z with windshield wiper problems that made proceeding in the blowing snow and then later mixed rain/snow more than a slight problem. Always good to think about those ancillary systems and how they can shut you down if not working properly. We left Seattle for Merritt, B.C. on Friday afternoon. With the car properly timed and running well, along with clear roads, the climb up and over the Coquihalla pass was uneventful. That would change in 24 hours. In Merritt we connected with event teammates in an ’01 Subaru WRX (Jeff & Marvin, winners of last year’s event, Unlimited, car#1), an ’83 Audi Quattro (Steve and Eric, Historic, #8) and an ’05 Subie Impreza (Steve and Kathryn, Paper, #17). To round out the team Jeff signed up a novice class car from BC, a 2011 Subaru STi (Scott and TJ, #38). Jokes about them sailing off the first curve proved unfounded. We were assigned #9 and were happy to be behind our friends in their loaner Audi. Dale (Subaru Forester). The four (or was it five?) way tie for third was decided in the same fashion. The team prize is still undecided, but we know that with the Audi’s mechanical and the Saab’s operator problems, Team Rainier is not a contender. And the Saab’s score? 303. We scored 3 points on Saturday and I scored 300 on Sunday. Those points are mine, all mine. The Thunderbird Rally is the premier BC event. We never know what the weather will throw at us, and that’s part of all the fun. Thanks to Paul and his crew for another primo rally.

It’s only now, ten days after the rally, that my heart has slowed enough to allow access to a coherent memory of the event. The driving challenge of The Thunderbird varies year-by-year, in pace with the snow cover on the roads. Before the 2010 running, we saw pre-run photos that suggested manageable levels of the white stuff, and the measuring teams’ reports posted to specialstage conformed; all the signs pointed to “one of the gentler Thunderbirds” (in the words of the Steward after a pre-running of the course). Well, t’was not so — and that we thought it would be so, was just our pride and hubris. Late last year, after Totem, on this forum, I predicted that “some team” wasn’t far away from zeroing both days of a BC Winter rally. With renewed humility, I’ll admit that I thought we might be that team — and that the rally would be The Thunderbird. . the running figure is the navigator, deploying the warning triangle. . . . . . don’t see the driver moving yet. . . . . . and there’s a control car just after the bridge. The bottom line was all that you would wish: To our great relief, driver and co-driver were okay; and the control car, skippered by an AlCan veteran, extracted the competitor car once the rest of the field had passed; and (to tell the truth) had the car in front of us not gone off there, we might well have: I was driving hard. Let us give a moment of thanks for the happy endings. Aside from “absence of anyones’ injury”, driving the car home is a primary goal. So, thereafter, we unwound ourselves, and took a time dec, and plowed on. Hubris -20. Snow there was on section 5, more snow than ANYBODY wanted. We curled back up the same approach for section 6 on Saturday, and no one mourned when we were given an “L at Stop” rather than the “Acute Right at Stop” that’d led into the travail. Saturday night’s scores looked like the old Thunderbird scores: leader at 14 points? Yep, that makes sense. No ties, either. Drivers and co-drivers had good things to say about the locations of controls… “It’s how you get separation in the Unlimited class — put controls just after the hard bits”.

At the end of Sunday, sitting at 8 points, we were tied with Jeff and Marvin. So in a tiebreaker for the tiebreaker, it became: “The car that took the first one-sided point loses the tiebreaker.” And that settled it, we did, one control before Jeff and Marvin.

The cars and people of TeamD had an impressive showing at the 2009 Thunderbird Rally in British Columbia. “TBird” as many call it is fairly called the biggest unpaved TSD rally in western North America. Overall kudos go to Satch Carlson and Russ Kraushaar, repeating their 2007 overall victory in the Historic class 1969 Saab Sonett with a finishing score of 6 — proving once again that AWD is not necessary to take the win on TBird’s challenging roads and conditions. Two additional classic Saabs were in the event, with Garth Ankeny and Ben Bradley piloting their red 1969 96 to an impressive top-ten overall finish and 2nd in Historic class. The other 96, a 1970 edition, was driven by John Vanlandingham and Adam Crane. Rules for the Savoia Aero Team prize precluded TeamD from competing in that arena — they needed to have entries in more than a single class. The team prize was awarded to Arctic Challengers.