Well, Hello all. Just thought I'd try to amuse you a little. Last Friday my
wife Kathy and I participated in the monthly Friday Night Rally put on by some
local clubs (http://www.teamhightower.com/nwrc/). It was Kathy's first rally
- usually I have my Dad as the navigator, but this time he also had his wife
Shellia as a navigator in his 74 BGT. Kathy and I were in our 72 BGT. I
thought that it would maybe be good for some fun family competition. My
mistake.
Dad and Shellia got lost on the odometer check! Shellia blamed it on Kathy
and I, as we were late to arrive and she was "so worried that she didn't
bother reading the directions". (That would indeed lead you to drive
off-course.) They did make it to the first stage, but got lost again on the
second and ended up driving directly to the rally end.
Kathy and I did pretty good on the first stage - 16 seconds off. Second
stage, there was an instruction that said "left or right", followed by an
instruction that said "left or right". Well, it wasn't perfectly clear what
we were supposed to do, so we ended up going off-course and maxed out on the
time penalty (300) - but at least we made it to the third stage. Third stage,
we did well - only 33 seconds off; but on the fourth stage, they introduced
"notes". "Notes" come into effect at a given point, and end only when
canceled. I did not know that the notes meant that the instructions were
meant to be repeated as appropriate - this time, two notes, each repeated
three times in a row! After the second note, we can across another team,
similarly lost. After a minute of discussion, the other driver said "I know
exactly - follow me!". And so we did. Barrelling through the darkness and
fog, mostly uphill in the twisties in the Cascade foothills (near Monroe, WA),
I was pretty much flat-out in third, chasing his taillights; and commented to
my Kathy "He's moving along - I can barely keep up with him - I thought he
was driving a Geo Metro!". We did eventually find the last checkpoint, and
although we did max out on the time penalty again, we felt good that we had
figured out about repeating "notes".
So at the pizza restaurant at the end, my wife commented that she hadn't hated
the experience and would be willing to try it again (minor victory!); Dad and
wife were not as unhappy as their performance warranted, but Shellia wasn't
very pleased with her own performance. We were very surprised to get third
(out of maybe 6 - 8 novices); and the person whom we followed out of the
fourth stage won Novice! And yes, he was indeed driving a Geo Metro. I think
that I really need that supercharger kit! I didn't let him know that I could
barely keep up . . .
It was fun. And I hope to see some more Northwestern MG's out there! Thanks
for reading this, too - I hope that you all have enjoyed your cars recently,
as well.
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