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

Hi Car Enthusiasts.

If you happen to be in Southern California this weekend and want something fun to do with your car, then I have a viable solution.

Santa Monica Sports Car Club, SMSCC, is putting on two rallies this weekend. Their usual 1st Friday Nighter rally which happens the 1st Friday of every month. This has been going on for years, and is one of the few things you can still count on in today’s world.

Here is the bonus. Your weekend membership to the SCCA for running this rally can be used Saturday too. Saturday’s rally is called the Citrus Blossom Special. I ran this rally last year and had a great time. The foothills north west of Los Angeles are the game board for this rally, and there are a lot of great roads to enjoy.

So come out this weekend and enjoy the great weather, the great roads, great friends, challenging puzzles, and the absence of the stress of the rest of the world for a few hours.

These two rallies presented by:

Zeros,

David

Technorati Tags: Car rallies, Car Rally, Fun with your car, Road Rally, TSD Rally

As I said in an earlier post, I got the privilege of checking out a great 6.5 hour Monte Carlo style rally coming to Southern California this February 23rd.

Please come join us, and bring your driving gloves and sticky tires. The roads are phenomenal!

Here is a link to the Flyer for this event.

Technorati Tags: automobile rally, Car Rally, car rallye, Monte Carlo Rally, rally, Rally event, rallye, Road Rally, Southern California Road Rally

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