Totem 2009
Veterans and Novices
Normally the previous year's winners are assigned Car #1; running that
spot is equal parts honor and duty.
The honor should be obvious, pride of place wot wot. And there are
benefits to running up front: you never have to wait in line for the
pump at the gas stops; the locals that you see still have no idea that
their road is hosting a mass migration of four-wheelers; the low, wet
spots on the section aren't chewed into mudholes; where there's
snowpack, it isn't all shiny and slick; and there are no deep tracks in
the snow leading off the road ... yet.
But there's a price, too, for running out front. You'll be the first to
find the one really slippery corner, or the blown-down tree, or the
nodding control crew. It's like being point man on patrol. On balance,
giving #1 to last year's winners is probably a handicapping method, sort of like the NBA's allocating the worst draft positions to the best
performing teams. More evidence: The rallymaster calls it "The Curse Of
Car #1".
Well, then, who won Totem 2008? Glenn Wallace & R. Dale Kraushaar did.
In winning last year, those two zeroed the entire second day. If ever a
handicap was called for...
But we got to the Bear's Claw, and #1 was not on their car; instead,
they were carrying #2. Whaaa? Those guys are veterans, they know the
drill -- how'd they miss the duty?
Pffft. Veterans? I'll give you veterans. The team in the lead car
included a man who first ran Totem in 1959. APPARENTLY, if you show up
with a pedigree like that, they just bow and hand you the #1. This time,
the award of first position is all about honor.
Near the other end of the train, running #20, a novice team's in a 4x4
pickup with 31" tires. They've strapped down some big chunks of wood in
the back... is that for weight? Or is there a bonfire later? I feel a
mild sense of dread on their behalf, but I can't think of a way to warn
them without sounding like a jerk or a fuddy-duddy. As Glenn Wallace put
it, `Nobody likes the "you're doomed" speech.' Same goes
for the very pretty Golf, with its supercharger and roll cage; the car
doesn't seem quite right for where we're headed.
And finally, there's a leviathan of steel, a sled so wide and so long
and so heavy that calculations of its polar momentum outstrip our
calculator's registers: it's the Rally de Ville.
Snow
We went through Tech in the midst of snow flurries, a delightful hint of
what was to come. Snow's what we hope for; snow's what makes Winter
rallies such a draw. And Totem did not disappoint: we had light coatings
that looked like drizzled icing on a Bundt cake; we had 6 or 8
centimeters of slightly moist snow in granules, like beach sand; we had,
early Sunday morning, some churned up brown slush. There was snow, snow,
snow, gravel, and snow. Reliable wit Eric Horst opined, "The snowiest
Thunderbird I ever saw was a Totem in 2009."
What we didn't have a lot of was ice -- and no one was complaining. You
might remember that the final section on Sunday last year was mostly ice
and mostly hilly. Some 2-wheel-drive cars didn't make it over, and some
AWD cars struggled to. This year, there were lots of new-looking studded
snow tires scratching their way around Cache Creek before the start.
Winter Scoring
To balance out the snow and ice, the B.C. winter rallies grant three
flavors of time relief.
The first is a one-second-each-way grace period around perfect time. If
your team crosses the timing mark up to a second before, or up to a
second after, the time the rallymaster's calculated, you get a zero.
The second type of relief expands the grace period after you've taken
points. If churned up brown slush forces you to slow below CAST, and
you're, say, 20 seconds late into Control #1, you'll take 19 points
there -- but if thereafter you're able to hold the CAST, you'll still be
20 seconds late into Control #2. It would be uncivil to give you another
19 points for the same shortcoming, so the grace period expands, for you
alone, to encompass the amount you were late at the previous control. So
your second 20 seconds late is accorded zero points. You can nibble away
at your lateness up 'til the end of the section, and so long as you get
closer to zero seconds off, you'll not take any more points.
The final variety of relief is a garden-variety time declaration. Time
decs were only recently adopted, and there's still a certain
distaste for them. Long time competitors disparage their use, preferring
to just run late and take the points they take.
A time dec "should" only be claimed for delays out of one's
control... but that meaning is obviously fluid. We found a 400 pound
Angus heifer standing sideways in the center of the road; it took us ten
or more seconds to slow, avoid, and creep around her. Is that delay
time-dec worthy? Normally we'd just hump it up above CAST and catch up
-- but this was on the slush, and I'd been near to my limit just to
reach CAST. Faster wasn't an option. Perhaps if the scores were, on
average, larger, the hyper-competitive folks would be more willing to
take the points -- but ten points is about five places in Unlimited.
Saturday night scoring came together quickly (more about that in a bit),
and Paul circulated the provisional scores. With his charming
oscillating timbre, Paul the rallymaster always sounds slightly
surprised. He had this comment:
"I'm going to be pressed to abandon Winter scoring."
"Why?"
"We have multiple teams with one point."
So we knew it was going to be tight. In Unlimited, it was 1-1-3-4-5 on
Saturday night.
And, of course, Offs
Sad to say, the 4x4 truck didn't make it to noon on Saturday. They slid
off with enough forward vector to deploy the airbags, and the shaken
co-driver wisely called a halt. The race-ready Golf wasn't
winter-rally-ready, and rolled early on. So far no serious injuries, and
I trust it won't spoil it for you if I say there were no serious
injuries over the weekend. There were, though, plenty more excursions
into the B.C. scenery. I think Sweep did six extractions the first day,
from a field of 21 cars.
Saturday ran late into the evening. I guess it usually does, but I
recall feeling surprise when I glanced at the Timewise clock just after
the midpoint break, and it read 5:30:00. It was fully dark, and there
were four sections left to run. Just before the start of the last
section, barely outside Williams Lake, the snow was falling in earnest.
The route took a loop off the Frasier Road, and two control crews were
heading in to their worker locations from the backside, running
counter-course. After a long straight stretch, there was a
flat-to-off-camber 90 right on the edge of a ravine, and the sticking
snow at the outer edge lay atop withered grass. The leading car braked,
set up, turned, and drifted just a skance wide -- too much! Despite AWD
and snow tires and a thorough driver warm-up on like conditions, there
was not enough room to save it. They went forward, off the edge.
The folks in the trailing car, if they did not actually see it, caught
on very quickly, and were immediately on the radio.
DIGRESSION: If you do not hold a HAM license, stop reading this and go
begin studying for the Technician level exam. You may pick this up again
later.
The first radio report gave chills to everyone listening. The car was
invisible, out of sight somewhere down in the trees. No one else was
nearby. Cars #0 -- #6 were already on course, but some 30km from the
location. There was no cell coverage. The organizers quickly dispatched
one of the workers towards town... and then there was a collective sigh,
like a half a hurricane, as the workers in the leading car (who'd gone
down the ravine) came on the radio sounding practically conversational.
We continued, on route, on time, following the rallymaster's lead, along
the quickest path to the spot. The hillside was steep, slippery, and
unclimbable. Rescuers made up a lifeline of towstraps, and tossed one
end down. We arrived just as the workers were pulled over the top. They
and their bags were quickly bundled away to the hotel, seemingly no
worse for wear. The car was left to slumber in the deepening snow, and
(not to foreshadow too much) so too slept an overlooked control log.
The Twist
We went on on Sunday, while Ron stuck around Williams Lake to get the
car. After the slushy first section, there was a lengthy regularity
along Spring Lake that was simply marvelous, in deep, tacky snow, and
lacking the usual underlayment of ice. Two more sections took us to the
end. As usual, Sunday's scores were better than Saturday's. Back in
Cache Creek, it appeared that both the front-runners had taken a single
point on Sunday, and it looked like breaking a 2-2 tie would be
necessary.
But the control log that'd been lurking in the ravine was retrieved with
the car, and delivered to the rallymaster. That score sheet dealt a
critical blow to one of the leading teams. With those latent scores
included, the second place team had half again as many points as the
winners!
That is, they had 3 points total, and the winners had 2.
Epilogue
I sense the day is near when a team will zero both days of a B.C. Winter
Rally, and perhaps as close is the day when we'll need to break a tie at
that score. It could happen next February, at The Thunderbird. I
strongly recommend that you go to The Thunderbird, and when you do,
bring your two-meter radio. You never know when you'll need it.
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