From: garnett@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu (Roger Garnett)
Shortly thereafter,
we came up on another car, speaking to a woman in the road. They managed to
get away as she came back and grabbed our car instead. Yes mam. No mam.
We aren't SPEEDING mam. No, I can't tell everybody to get off the road mam.
yes, sorry about that. she thought the road was `private', even though
it is named, appears on the maps, and has no signs suggesting anything
other than a dirt, public roadway.
locals are sometimes very attached to their roads. also, they rarely
really know what `speeding' actually looks like, and ofttimes confuse
noise (caused by running at high revs) with speed.
Checkpoint 3 was a DIY, with out 2 min. after in. Gerry came rolling up soon
after we stopped. We pulled along side and heard a quick saga of the fuel
pump, and got started about 20 sec. late, which was a no-no, due to CkPt. 4
appearing after just another 0.5 mi... :-o
that'll teach you. unfortunately, the turnout in class B was limited,
because 4 was set up to hose the average B competitor. you see, the
average B team would do a 1 minute hack to compare correct timekeeping
with actual time keeping. with the 32mph average speed assigned, control
4 was 1.05 minutes after control 3 -- just enough time so that the average
B team would know how early or late they were into 4, but not enough time
for them to do anything about it. the lesson? if you're running in B,
the first hack after a speed change or turn should be at 0.5 minutes, not
1.0 minutes.
Three more checkpoints to lunch, with our best time of the day on
leg 6 ( 0.03 min, error = 3 over 8.64 mi!) which did us no good due to leg 6
being thrown out due to a typo. :-( (Those whining class A's, ya know?)
well, it was a mistake in the route instructions, after all (i inadvertantly
gave an official mileage of 45.45, when the correct mileage was 45.49;
some A teams figured out that this was a mistake, but some treated 45.45 as
correct and made adjustments. control 6 was another DIY, and, 45.45 was
the last OM i gave them before the control location, so one class A guy
got a bug up his ass about having to toss leg 7 as well, because the
mistake would cause the rallyists to start leg 7 incorrectly, but the
claims committee didn't buy it, and voted him down.)
The afternoon was a bit less eventful, with some nice views along
the way. We began to relax a bit especially after deciding to bag the time
calculations. We missed one turn, due to not reading the instruction soon
enough, but only went about 50 yards before backing up.
you have to watch that. technically, we were following the NER style
1 inch rule; the minimum distance between numbered route instructions, or
parts of route instructions, is 1 inch. i rarely made the distance less
than 0.08 miles, though. if it'd been a trap rally, though, you might
have been hosed.
The GT held up well, with no parts falling off or breaking. It is
nice to be able to climb into a solid MG, even if the engine is still
lacking a bit. Scoring took a while,
scoring was an absolute bloody disaster. i'm suprised i survived.
Thanks again to Rich & all for an enjoyable event.
thanks for the compliments. now i have to assist allison the 2x4
rally in june, and prepare for _No Exit, an Existentialist Road Rally_
in September.
Tilly is even
saying good things like "When is our next rally?" :-)
_No Exit_ would quickly change that attitude.
also, Roger, you forgot to mention all the fine Saugerties Police
at control 7, or did you hear all the details about that little
episode?
and then there were all the unpaved roads that mysteriously turned
paved about 3 weeks before the rally.
richard
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