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