by James BialasNow this is what motorsports is about! Nearly 200 miles of snow covered unpaved roads to cover while trying to maintain a specific speed. Yup, it's the Minnesota Winter Rallye. This time I was navigating for Matt Jachimstal in his RWD Ford Ranger. (FWD and all those other "snow-friendly" type vehicles are for wimps!). Steve was having problems with the Torino again, so we were the sole representatives of MTU at this rally.
Michigan Technical University
Houghton, Michigan
A little bit of misplanning (damn those time changes!) had us in Proctor, MN about 3 hours earlier than we needed to be. Breakfast at the Blackwoods Grill and a heaping helping of rally lies helped pass the time until the chaos of registration. Registration proved a bit hectic as someone lost our completed tech inspection check-off list. At least we managed both the early registration fee and the SCCA discount bringing our entry fee to a low $20.
Upon receiving the instructions, we saw it would be a fun ride. All tulip instructions with mileages and even pretty good indications of where the checkpoint would be. Except for a few CAST changes without mileages, this looked like it might be easy, or at least fun. A half an hour with a calculator and we had all our calcs done for the rally (or so we thought).
Since the rally had to pass through a rather congested residential area, the beginning was rather slow. Soon enough we found ourselves ripping down some snow covered country roads. As a conservative navigator, I advised following the CAST the whole time. Matt preferred going as fast as he could go until right before last instruction before a checkpoint. Slippery road conditions, tight corners and a few yumps kept Matt's speed low and my heartrate up. I was impressed, this was the first TSD rally I've been to that had actually yumps. Maybe if we were actually doing CAST they might have been mere bumps, but they sent the rear of the Ranger flying at least once. Deer also made themselves readily apparent, some even choosing to run alongside the truck for a bit. And even through all this, we only saw one car in the ditch, a black Honda from the rally. Apparently one of the locals had come to his aid.
Somewhere along here we found ourselves stepping off the side of the road for a quick, err, "pit stop". Little did we know, the side of the road was actually under 3 feet of soft snow that gave the appearance of only a foot of snow. We found each of ourselves face down and covered with snow. Good thing the Ranger had a nice heater.
The end of the rally found us back on the city streets for some driving around the airport. Boring. We screwed up an instruction just before a checkpoint and slaughtered our time. Normally I wouldn't be to upset, but the lack of scenic driving was starting to wear on me. Add to that nearly 200 miles of driving and some less the discovery that we were calculating our time wrong, and I was ready to head in. At least they provided us a very scenic and somewhat entertaining road to drive back to HQ on, even if it was plowed pavement.
Arriving back at the Blackwoods Grill found the place absolutely packed. We hung around a bit for refreshments and rally lies and long enough to determine we didn't come in last. After which we left early for dinner at Micky D's and the long drive home.
Well, we didn't exactly make it home... We stopped in Ashland, WI to rest in the local Best Western and breakfast with the snomoblowers.
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