Well once again i would like to thank the crew at Santa Monica Sports Car Club for an excellent Saturday afternoon.

This rally was a little different from the normal Tome Speed Distance (TSD) Rallies. Not My Fault was made up of legs that required the same amount of calculating, but less boring driving.

Joanna Paden the rallymaster found some of the greatest driving roads in Southern California to be on, designed a rally where we were not bound by a certain cast, and then trough in a little bit of gimmick to keep the navigator busy watching the road instead of tossing cookies. Yes, the roads were that good.

The only part of the rally that bothered me, is the generals were not specific as to where the mileage was calculated to, and she veered away from 80 years of tradition. This therefore caused us to be off on our milegae calculations. We did figure it out when we crossed the last hose conveniently located in the shade because the hose could be anywhere as long as it was in sight of the “calculated point”.

The winning car figured it out early, and I believe the 2nd place car and us did not since our scores were almost exactly the same.

I think the concept of the rally was great, It was a lot of fun and I will know better next time.

Thank you Joanna for a great rally!

Not My Fault Rally

Technorati Tags: Fun things to do with your car, rally, Southern California Rally, TSD Rally

Wow, what a great day to spend with friends. Yesterday was (I believe) the 2nd running of Santa Monica Sports Car Club’s (www.smscc.org) Citrus Blossom Special.  

This was a TSD (Time Speed Distance) rally with enough free/transit zones to make the event fun for both the driver and the Navigator. I won’t tell you how fast I had to go when we missed a landmark and had to turn around through the longest stoplight known to man.  But I did make up the 4.5 minutes!

It was a pretty straight forward rally with a long enough mileage check to make our factor almost spot on. We corrected the factor after the 3rd leg and started getting our mileages to match exactly to the rallymaster’s (Rachel Smith) mileage.  Now if we could have just foundd all the signs, we would have been in pretty good shape.

Since our mileages where spot on for most of all the legs, I am assuming Joe and I found the traps having to do with direction of travel, such as the onto’s at highway 34 and Balcolm Canyon (tricky one here). Our errors for the day, where not getting enough stop signs counted or not canceling a lettered instruction. We did not turn in a winning score, but we were proud of never going off course, which was the buzz at the pizza joint at the end.

As for the route, What great roads! After the mileage check which ended in Agoura Hills, we were sent down W. Potrero Rd. (for the driver) into Camarillo.

After checkpoint one in this area, off to checkpoint 2. On the way there a double ( I am not sure it was intentional) trap was encountered. We were turned onto 34 which if you stayed onto, turned you left and North through Camarillo and Somis. If you went straight at the intersection you found the part of the WOF instruction to turn you back on course. If you are following along with a map, the instruction was go staight at “historical” or left at Adolfo and then right at Lewis WOF. By following the onto course properly, you actually encountered a sign acceptable (speed limit 50 mph) for the next route instruction before you completed the previous on course WOF sign (historical), and being about 8 minutes later, confidence that the “historical” sign had been missed was high, therefore a coin toss to put in a cast change and continue on. A few minute later you find the hard to see “historical” sign on the right as it should be, but the 2nd part of the same trap, was the off course part of the WOF instruction ” L at Adolfo” could be carried out 50 feet further up the road, so this is what some drivers concentrated on and therefore missed the “historical” sign on the right. We did witness another rally car make the left turn to nowhere.  Sneaky stuff.  Nice job rallymaster!

So checkpoint 2 is a DIYC (Do it yourself checkpoint). As we were leaving checkpoint 2, Joe says it would be really sneaky to put a checkpoint immediately after the left turn. Low and Behold, there it was, about .2 of a mile from checkpoint 2. Thank goodness I was on the clock!

The next fun part of the rally was in the Citrus groves just outside Fillmore. We had just had a break, and all fattened up with good fast food. And my navigator was so satisfied, he decided it was time for a nap while I drove around the orchards at 20 mph. Needless to say, we missed a sign or two.  But our mileage was right on!

The rest of the rally was more of a drivers rally. A great free zone traveling from Santa Paula to Ojai. Memories brought back as I drove by the front gate of my High School (Thacher School, CdeP ‘80) familiar roads to get us through the trap in downtown Ojai.

Back on to Highway 150 to drive past Lake Casitas and over the foothills to beautiful Carpinteria and the ocean view.  Being from the area, I had pretty much predicted where the last two checkpoints would be, and we got two 1’s to finish up the rally.

Thanks and Kudos to the SMSCC team for another great day of great people, great fun, and forgetting about the rest of the world for five and half hours.

Keep up the great work!

David Budlong

Technorati Tags: Car Rally, Citrus Blossom Special, Fun with your car, Road Rally, SMSCC, TSD Rally

Just wanted to take a moment and congratulate Justin for writing a great rally!

We had thirteen cars enter the rally. Not too bad when gas was reaching the $4.00 per gallon mark.

We had a great crew to man all of the checkpoints.

If you want to see the routes, you can click on the link in the side panel and downlad them for free! Work them out and go drive some great roads. If you have any questions, post them here and I will answer them for you.

Zeros,

David

Hey gang,

As I told you previously, I had ordered a new Alpha-elite Rally computer the other day. It came and I am impressed with the quality.

Today I am going to hook it up in my new rally car. It is a brand new car and it will feel a little weird going in to hard wire a rally computer.

I will do a clean installation so no one will know when I am not running a rally.

Pictures later.

David

Technorati Tags: rally, Rally Computer, Rally Computer Installation., Road Rally

I wanted to give a quick post so that I may link the photos of ITN’s (Into The Night) 16 hour rally for 2007 which started in Santa Barbara and ended in Las Vegas.

This rally was a lot of fun even for those of us that worked it. Fantastic Roads, great cars and great friends.

Anyway, This rally was on to be remembered, and if you follow this link, you can see some pictures of the cars and people at their best.

Thanks for visiting

David

This weekend, the fist weekend in February 2008 was a busy rally weekend for me. Friday night was the FFN (First Friday Nighter). This is a TSD style rally put on by the Santa Monica Sports Car Club (SMSCC) every first Friday of the month. I had gotten a call from Tom G., a fellow rally enthusiast, asking if I would drive for him. I am pretty much ready to rally anytime. I accepted his offer with enthusiasm.

Driving from Santa Barbara to the start of the rally in Mission Hills was an ordeal, Just over 2 hours for a normal 1.5 hour drive. I met Tom at the start, we entered the rally as car number 3, set our clock, read the routes (not quite well enough we will find out later) and got ready to go. Although this was our first rally together, we both brought a fair amount of experience to the event. But the main thing we brought was a desire to forget everything else going on, and enjoy some good roads and some fun competition.

Tonights rally was called a driver’s rally by the rallymaster, and she was right. There was section of the rally that went up Lake Hughes road. For those of you who have never driven this road, it is a 35mph road in a Chevette, and a road asking for spirited driving in any sports car. Well since we are driving my 2000 BMW Z3, the later is more our style.

Jeanne (the rallymaster) allowed us to enjoy this road as it should be enjoyed. She made it a free zone. A free zone allows the entrant the freedom of knowing there will be no checkpoint between point A and point B. So properly calculated at a safe speed we had 31 minutes to travel 22 miles. This is a 42.60 mph average speed. This is a great way to time this road, because there are sections of the road which are nice and straight, and then there are sections with decreasing radius turns, therefore trying to hold any constant speed is out of the question.

Well, I had a navigator who had not experienced my driving, so I thought I would go for it. Well when we got to the end of the 22 miles, we had 12 minutes to burn off.  Needless to say, I had a great time.

The rest of the rally was spent keeping us on time and entering the checkpoints at precisely the correct time as per the instructions. We were doing well too, we had cought the traps set and were sitting on a two. On the last leg, we did not read all of an instruction and it cost us. A penalty of 40 and we got our normal 1 off error too. So we went to the finish with a score of 43. Not the best but not the worst either.

We had a great time though. Thanks SMSCC for keeping this going for so long.

Ok, Now it is Saturday and it is time to look over the routes and maps for a rally I was asked to check out by my good friend Joe. This is when I got the idea of this site. Joe is guilty of getting me into this sport. He has been rallying ofr many years, has taught his son to rally (he was the only 8 year old I knew who could calculate average speeds, entry times and read a map upside down that I know of).

Anyway Joe, a couple of others and I are going to spend Saturday afternoon checking out a rally Joe had written that will be happening on the 23rd of February 2008.

When I started reviewing the routes, I noticed that just about every road on the route called for spirited driving and were some of Joe’s favorite roads. Roads like Balcolm Canyon, N2, San Fransquito and so forth. I started to smile, even if I had woken in the morning with a bad head cold.

So as not to spill the particulars of this rally, I will not say too much, just that I had a great time checking out the rally and the roads were great.

If you would like further information on Training Wheels (the name of the rally) please visit www.ITNrally.org.

I have alos posted the flyer for the event and that can be viewed here.

Till next week when Joe and I run SMSCC’s rally the Inaugural

Technorati Tags: Autombile Rally, Car Rally, Monte carlo style rally, rallye, Road Rally, Southern California Road Rally