Glenn - Although the 'official'
stories have not yet surfaced, I feel like devoting
a few bytes to it, which might stir some comment
from the other entrants.
The announcement said it would predominantly
be a gravel rally.....I think there was more
snow than TBird 2000 perhaps, though not as much
as Tbird 99, which ended with most of the cars
stuck up the side of a mountain on the last stage!
(we were ahead of the 2WD cars..... and didn't
get stuck).
Paul Westwick & co put on really good events
(we've been to three) and this was no exception.
Quick scoring and results, excellent instructions
and great BC roads.
Saturday was pretty scary. At the bar the night
before, Paul told us that the 3rd stage of Saturday
was the infamous 1st stage of TBird 99. That
gave me immediate pause to reflect on how much
trouble we had in the really loose, deep powder
on that stage. Then he said the first two stages
of Totem had even more fresh snow...
Speaking of the bar, it seems that all 6 of
the good looking women in Canada (sorry) had
congregated there to dance to some very loud
70's disco music, and then flash themselves at
the DJ. Whatever, eh?!
I went down to the car early to start it and
get the computer hooked up. Trusty Rat Shack
thermometer showed 11 F outside the car, 14 F
inside. Hmm. Would you believe Alcan 2000.5?
It had warmed up to 19 F by the first car out.
Our first hint that the Totem gods were smiling
on us came in the middle of the first stage.
Richard called "turn right at the triangle shaped
intersection onto something Rd...." of course,
being the dumb driver, I started trying to match
the roads to his description rather than turning
the damn car. Richard says "did you see the sign?".
I said "oh yeah, in my mirror". Richard nods.
I thought it was a SOR (sign on R) not TURN RIGHT
at SOR. Dumb drivers. Even after that exchange,
we hadn't fully communicated what had transpired....
and I hadn't turned. Suggestion: acknowledge
your turns (e.g. "turning right onto blahblah
Rd").
So we are a few km up the road and come across
a large herd of cattle heading towards us. Being
the impatient/scared type I thought it important
to assert my ownership of the road to the cows,
with a few well placed blasts of the 118dBA Hella
Supertones. Boy, did those cows scatter! Unfortunately
the cowboy driving them (who I didn't see) didn't
seem to be as impressed with my cattle driving
skills....
I lowered my window and apologised (the cows
seemed to recover) and we continued.
After another few km we decided the instructions
didn't seem to match and traced back to the fact
we hadn't taken the turn. Navigator insists he
was too buried in his notes to notice we didn't
turn.....
We head back.... of course running into the
same herd of cows, and the Canadian cowboy atop
his magnificent horse, and his (what I think
were) Australian cattle dogs (hey I'm from Brisbane,
not Broken Hill).
After a suitable pause, he herds the cows off
the road and we wave and press on.
We take the left (the right we missed) and head
up the hill. The driver, probably still trying
to figure out what type of dogs they were, slowly
slides the trust Subaru steed into a little ditch
on the left of the road. Not enough to be high
centered but definitely stuck (without a rear
LSD).
Left side of the car are pressed against the
snow covered bank (how thick is that snow? Are
there any trees or rocks or metal bars inside
it?)
Richard does triangle duty, and though we're
equipped with plenty of _working_ shovels following
our TBird 2000 stuff, I elect to try to rock
the car out. Going backwards seems to help, even
though the car stalls twice.
Finally heading back (just shown of a small
tree and medium sized pit) with left hand down
pops the front out enough to get forward traction
and we're off.
Given our ~25km or so detour, and our stuff,
I'm expecting to be _after_ the sweep truck,
but we get to the end of the stage (no controls!!!)
and then to the end of the next transit to find
cars 1-5 (we're car 6) there, but no one else.
"Other cars were stuck earlier in the stage,
30 minute delay for the rest of the day!". Hallelujah!
No points, no time to make up. This was truly
some Totem sized LUCK.
So Saturday night we're coming down a dark and
snowy hill, and I brake, the ABS goes crazy -
note that this is not normal on snow for a Subaru
with Hakkas, which is why I leave the ABS enabled...
it provides a good traction alert function.
Then I realize what is going on - glare ice
down the hill and through the corner. But this
is not your normal glare ice, this stuff I think
was silicon coated, and the brakes were certainly
not helping the situation, so I started the gentle
sideways flick to hopefully bleed some speed
off and head away from the black pit over the
edge.
The right is followed by a left and we fishtail
within inches of each edge. This and the next
corner were quite a sphincter pucker test. Had
we been carrying a little more speed into the
corner and we would have been down in the black
pit.
Up the icy straight we see a local's truck but
think nothing of it, not knowing that Russ Kraushaar
and co (car #1) had already gone into said black
pit, their fall having been stopped by a tree....
From the accounts of the cars ahead of us, they
had already (in 5 minutes!) found a local and
organized a lift into town. Russ and his dad
were thankfully unharmed but the car was far
from the road. Hopefully Russ will post some
more details (including recovery - how do you
bring a totalled car back into the US?), although
to be honest that whole section and the thought
of a car going off that road gave me nightmares!
Saturday night had us in the (undeserved) outright
lead --- though to even contemplate winning this
event at that stage would put too much of a hoodoo
on it - after all, it only takes one stuff or
mistake to lose a rally (and we'd already had
one!). I almost didn't put the Nokian Tyre and
Grand Canyon Tours Rally contingency decals on
the car Friday – why bother, I thought!?
Sunday's driving was much more "pleasantly" challenging
(as opposed to the _other_ kind of challenging),
with many (if not all) stages being from TBird
99. We even saw gravel roads (without snow) in
a couple of places.
We thought we were doing "pretty well", until
we came down to a right turn with a control in
plain site. We had been on time but had lost
5 or 6 seconds in the few turns before the downhill
(nice control placement!). It wasn't worth a
total stuff for a few points at that control,
so we went through.
The last control was at a tunnel.... although
there was Bill (I think) waving us to slow down.
Some woman with dogs in the tunnel!!! We were
at 6,000 RPM in 2nd gear at the time, but obediently
slowed down, assuming the control would be tossed
(it was).
Sitting next to R.Dale at the awards - I was
lamenting not being granted spousal permission
to enter Alcan 2000, and he remarked that the
driving on Totem 2000 was more challenging than
the conditions on Alcan. That certainly made
me feel good.
The competition in Unlimited was very close.
An impressive drive from the Sorems took Paper
(and we assume PCC too; winning wasn't enough
for us to catch up, though we were hoping the
Tabor clan would win paper :). Another impressive
drive was from the novices in the Focus ZX3 (how
did they get that thing up the hills?). I should
note that Totem was our first win together, so
that was also nice.
After our first huge mistake and stuff on Saturday,
we almost headed south. So Sunday night, I called
to tell my four year old daughter we had won: "you
DID?!" she said. On the kids show "Blues Clues" one
of the episodes is themed "don't give up, just
go on". When I told her we didn't give up, she
said "just go on!". So I think that is now my
rally motto.
One final obligatory plug : Russ asked when
I was going to get a decent Timewise setup, instead
of my "homebrew hackerware" laptop software.
Why hadn't we won any events with it? My answer,
of course, was : driver error, navigator error.
The timing part is easy. At least, that's what
I think.
Glenn |