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
