2002 The Road Not Taken Rally Cont.

From the navvie seat of Jon's WRX

2002 The Road Not Taken Rally

Later in the summer of ’02, I attend the third event in the i-Club Rally series, a map style Monte Carlo rally. This time, I’m navvie for my buddy Jon. With some luck, we take first place. At the bar after the event the organizers, Pete and Lee, have a talk with Jon and I and convince us to go up to Oregon in August and compete in The Road Not Taken SCCA touring rally. It’ll be a all day affair, on dirt logging roads west of Salem. Jon and I take the challenge, and I agree to navvie. We drive up all day Friday, meet up with the rest of the competitors at the Rally HQ. Some 40+ cars show up, including four curious newbies from the SF Bay Area. Pete and Lee give us some tips, and off we go. Granted this was more gravel driving than either of had ever done, it could have been the Dakar Rally to us. The 250 mile event kept us on our toes, with lots of very narrow and twisty roads up and over all sorts of mountains. Since we are running dead last in the run-order, we end up finishing well after dark around 9pm, long after the winners (Lee and his brother Rod) had have showers and drink or two. We were totally exhausted. The drive home had us both nodding off on the way to our hotel in Salem. The event was awesome, and hooked us both on gravel rallies.

More Dirty fun at Thunderhill

SCCA RallyCross at Thunderhill, July 2002

More dirty fun: RallyCross

It wasn't long before I got wind of the first ever SCCA RallyCross event in northern California. Rally-X as it's called, is much like AutoCross, but on gravel. The idea is cars compete one at a time, on a course set on gravel and defined by cones. Courses are typically about 30 seconds long, each competitor gets three runs and the times are added up for your daily score. This was a LOT of fun!! About 60 cars came ranging from stock street cars to stage rally prepared 400hp monsters. I didn't do so well, but I had a hell of a good time. The one thing I did learn was that I still had no idea what I was doing on loose surfaces, but it was fun nonetheless!