2002 NoBM

On behalf of me and my co-navigator Eric Horst, we'd like to thank Greg Hightower and ORCA for presenting the 2002 installment of Night on Bald Mountain. NoBM is a totally fun evening-to-night TSD touring rally on the great gravel roads of the Washington cascades. TeamD was well represented by ours and two other cars. At Snoqualmie summit a field of 23 competitor were assembled, some traveling from Alaska, Arizona, California and even Ballard.

Greg swears that many of the rally roads were riddled with washboard only weeks before the event. But benevolent bulldozers cleared the way for a smooth and most enjoyable drive in the forest. After the sun left the mountains there seemed to be nothing to support the sky and at times we were inundated with it's fluffy clouds. Some cars were intimidated by the fog, while on occasion I could distinctly hear "Bring it on!" from not far back in the pack.

Eric's BMW 325iX was well prepared and made the magic happen. Due to not being able to order the gravel tires he wanted in time for the event Eric chose studded Hakkapeliitas over his only other option of smooth street tires. The Hakkas served us well and probably made our line thru the curves more obvious to followers. Speaking of Hakkas if any of you were looking for a set for your Range Rover, sorry we just sold our last set :)

Our position as the first car allowed us to keep clear of some slow local traffic that caused delays for later cars. You'll hav to take our word for the fact that we neither pissed-off nor paid the cars that slowed other rallists. Tho, we did encounter some deer that did the standard schizophrenic deer dance, 'I'm going to run in front of your car, I'm going to run into the bushes, no, I'm going to run in front of your car, no, no into the bushes'.

It's a good feeling when everything comes together on a rally, and an especially good feeling when your efforts let you escape, even narrowly, with fewer points that the field of very skilled and experienced competitors. We won first in unlimited class and first overall. Our hats are off to the other trophy winners and especially the team of Ben Bradley and Russ Kraushaar who only lagged us by three penalty points.

We were also please to be joined NoBM by the two other TeamD cars. Those of Jim Hogan / Marvin Crippen and Dan Hogan / Kevin Cummins. Jim and Marvin were scary good taking home the 2nd place trophy in the we-don't-need-no-stink'n-rally-computer class. Dan and Kevin were delayed by having to take some puke breaks but demonstrated what they were capable of by getting a zero and a one for the last two checkpoints.

Events conspire to keep us away from the Armageddon and Midnight rallys so our next touring rally will be Totem. Maybe Eric will just leave the Hakkas on the car?

We hope to see many of you on the Seattle area October Friday Nighter (tomorrow!). Eric is the Rallymaster. I think it will hav enough entertaining variety to make it a nice cap to the Friday Niter season. Additionally, there is an insidious link between the October Friday Niter and Night on Bald Mountain. A connection forged in early February that will only be clear to those who pay attention to both rallies.

Again, thanks to Greg and his crafty crew. It was a very smoothly run event with very scary and creative trophies. The only remaining question is where do we send our registration check for next year?

See you all on down the road.

steve