"SHARP right at 1.23 miles." States Baldi, punching numbers into the calculator. My odometer reads 1.0. I give a quick glance into to my right to view the tulip diagram to give me an idea of what I'm driving towards. The ghetto diagram looks like it was made in MS Paint but they get the job done.
"You have 30 seconds to get through. Better bump it up to 45mph."
"Yeah, well..." I trail off, all my concentration on the road ahead of me. I barely remember anything he just said. I know that I'm going too slow, barely doing 35mph and my average speed class is 36. It's black outside and I can only see about 100 feet in front of me, my view limited by snowflakes the size of quarters driving against my headlight pattern. I try to increase my speed, but the best I can manage is just above 40. Baldi adds,
"There's a quick left 0.12 after the turn, ignore the 'ROAD CLOSED' sign."
The "road" we are barreling down is approximately 6 inches of snow covering gravel. The Civic is jumping from one set of Subaru ruts to the next, by the time it settles down, I start to see the turn up a head. DAMN! It is sharp!
"Shhhiiiii..." I udder, quickly but fluently jumping onto the brakes. The tires immediately lock. I feather the pedal trying to keep the car straight. As the tires shudder over the snow, Baldi looks up from the route map, suddenly aware of the critical situation and quickly grabs the door handle. (HA! like that's going to help.)
About 100 ft off the turn and the car is still doing about 20. Dunlop did not design my all-season tires for this much snow. There is no way in hell I'm making this turn unless I get some not-learned-in-class physics help. I see a little rut off the inside of the turn and start to coerce the inside track into it. I feel a satisfying jolt as the wheels fall off the edge of the road, into deeper snow. I quickly get on the gas, but only enough to keep power to the wheels. If I spin them, I jump the rut and classroom physics takes over, sending me into the outside tree line. With some reserved throttle, I'm through and reaching over the steering wheel to reset my odometer while simultaneously tracking out from the turn, sliding back in the scooby ruts.
"There it is!"
I don't even get my finger off the odometer as Baldi yells. Still tracking out, I try to get back to the other side of the road but horrid understeer only gets me to the middle as I come upon the corner. Frantically, I yank the brake handle and turn left. The car begins to rotate towards my turn. I throw it into second and get on the gas, wheel (no differential here!) wildly spinning as we slide sideways through the corner onto the new road, narrowly missing the 'Seasonal Road' sign. I stabilize the civic and look ahead at what appears to be a straightaway.
I made it through one more turn unscathed. My palms are sweating, my heart is racing and I'm back to scanning the limited view my headlights offer me. Baldi is slouched over the route map again, coolly prompting me.
"Reset. Right in 1.2 and you need to go faster."
____
The above is only about a twenty second excerpt from my six-hour, 160 mile road rally I entered this past Saturday night. I already gave you the background behind a TSD roadrally in my last post, so I'll recap the race here.
We started in Piffard, about 10 minutes outside of SUNY Geneseo, at some local bar. After filling out my entry forms and getting my car through a painless tech inspection ("Let's see- Roof? Check. Tires, with rubber? check. Hood, with no holes in it[for better or worse, see Subaru intercooler mount]- check) I looked around the parking lot to check out my competition. Yeah, I don't think I've seen so many STI's, EVO's and 2.5RS's in one parking lot at the same time. I felt immediately out of place and began to fear that I would end up stuck in the boonies somewhere without AWD. But I also spotted a Danger, a beater Neon and of all things, an Aveo. I summized that it must be at least possible to compete with my front wheel drive car. My mental goal was to beat the Aveo. Only slightly below my other goal of not wrecking the car in the next few hours. Remember those snow tires? They didn't fit, I'll be rollin' on all seasons.
A quick driver meeting and we were off the the OMP. Apparently, this is the part of the rally
were competitors drive AS FAST AS POSSIBLE. I mean, we left in the middle of the pack from the parking lot, and promptly got passed by every car behind us... I guess they were just savoring the paved roads.
We make it to the OMP just fine, and I get my first taste of what the night will entail. Hard-packed, snow-covered gravel road. Little did I know, this was one of the best roads I'd be traveling.
And, begin!
Baldi spits out speeds and distances and I hit the go pedal. The trickiest thing for me to master is resetting the odometer while turning, but I master it after a few corners. At this point it's nearly 5:30pm and quickly becoming dark. And starting to snow BIG snowflakes. While we were in the bar, I saw a weather report with a lake effect system coming up from the south west of the state, so I kind of knew snow would be inevitable. Whatever, I hail from the real upstate NY- snow can't hurt me.
Snow in the sky, snow on the roads, closed roads, a couple pants-filling experiences and a few checkpoints later we make it to the half-way break, sometime around 8pm. We end up at some gas station in Belmont, NY. Don't know where that is? Neither do I but I wasn't lost! There were more PA plates than NY plates in the parking lot. I get out to give the rally civic a quick once-over. It's still in one piece but now has custom racing graphics slathered on the side. All panels from the front quarter back are completely covered in a thick mixture of sand and slush, obscuring any white paint. The back end has 3 inches of snow packed onto it. The only color you can see is where the taillights have managed to melt the snow off the lens. I like the look but I'm too hungry to pay much more than a glance at it. Besides, I'm still on the clock and I need to get some food before the second half of the rally begins.
The second half of the race passed without anything special to note. I think the first half numbed my brain and any crazy incidents were just 'the norm' from then on. You know- sliding along a road with 8 inches of snow on it, bottomed out. A road which obviously had not been traveled all winter until the 17 cars spaced in front of me hit it. A road that is clearly marked as CLOSED. That kind of norm. We end at the bar again around 11pm.
So how did we finish? We secured 15th overall and 3rd place in the novice class. I'd say that's fairly good for my first rally attempt. Was it fun? Well, exhilarating may be a better word. I gave myself and Baldi a handful of scares along the route. If anything, I discovered the limits of the civic in the snow and those limits are pretty damn high. Will I do it again? Definitely. But I'm not doing it without snows mounted all around and a set of rally lights.
Oh, and I dominated that Aveo.
_ttk3
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