2004 Raindrop

This was where we started last year, so this was the beginning of our second season. Raindrop is a nice tidy little rally held on one day usually just a hour's drive from Seattle. Unfortunately neither Benson or I was on our game, both of us were feeling under the weather a bit. We ran with the Curta and the Rally Odo but that didn't help much. We salvaged a third but really weren't too happy about it.

2004 Thunderbird

Finally....Thunderbird, the rally I've heard so much about. Thunderbird is one of the oldest rallies in north America, held in British Columbia in the middle of winter. The rally covers approximately 400 miles of snow-covered backroads. This event was one of the most challenging and most fun rallies I've done. We had a little of everything, deep snow, steep grades, fog, snow, and ice. If you ever want to really perfect your snow driving this is a great way to do it. I'm proud to say we only had one "off" with no damage. One stage was actually on a ice-racing course on a frozen lake. I can't recommend this event enough - go do it if you can!

2003 Totem

2003 Totem was the last event for the PCC. We had a solid second place in the championship, but needed to consolidate and not screw anything up. Totem has become the first of two great snow rallies in the PNW. It's held in November in the British Columbia interior, east of Vancouver.

2003 Night on Bald Mountain

In October, we were back to the fall classic: Night on Bald Mountain. As this years event was not part of the PCC, we opted to run in the equipped class and run the Curta. NoBM is a gravel event, starting in the early evening near Olympia. The rally finishes around 11pm after traversing various back country dirt roads. This time however we were not the only ones out there, as this was during the beginning of hunting season there were lots of hunters driving and camped along the roads. Combine this with pea-soup like fog and rain it was a challenging event. The Curta proved to be a strong ally, as our penalties per checkpoint were more than halved. It was not long before Benson could have entire stages pre-calc'd to all the NRI's. From there it was up to me to drove to the times. The only flaw was that we were still using the stock odometer, so we still had the navigation dificulties this offers like "when is the turn?" "in...uggg..aaa...pretty soon?!?". Benson and I really enjoyed NoBM as it was not far from home and felt like the right length. Since it was at night, we didn't feel like we were giving up our entire weekend for an event. With the night's challenges we were plenty glad to go home too! We also got some hardware for our effort as we took 2nd in equipped class.

2003 Wild West ProRally cont.

This is Mark Nelson in the Team Dynamics car - he did a helluva job on it! Mark was one of my instructors at the CRS Rally School.