Nemadji Trail Competitor Registration is open

well we're home and I'm still jacked up on adrenaline!!! freakin' awesome

A huge thanks to all the workers and organizers!! you guys put on a perfect event!!

Also many, many, many thanks to the Ziptie Rally Crew! Dan, Dan, Andrew, Matt, Sheen, Brian you guys did a fantastic job servicing the vehicle today - smooth sailing!

Dave, thanks for co-driving and keeping me honest - I think we did pretty good today!

A special thanks to the Drury family for volunteering the cabin - we'll make sure Ava's first words are "Rally Rally Rally"

It was also great to see a lot of people who have helped us out and guided us on our journey down the rally road (mark utecht, scott putnam, graham evans to name a few...)

We weren't fast but we made it back in one piece! We won Open Light for both rallies (it's gonna be a fun year running against Mason Moyle, we are very evenly matched!)

Can't wait for gravity park in a few weeks

 

rallyrallyrally...

I'm going to try to not be sick for gravity park.

 

definitely was an AWESOME event. Anesa and I got home at about 9:15 last night. and I think I was hopelessly unconscious by 10.


We really couldn't have asked for much more. It didn't rain (yea...it was a bit on the cool side, but livable), the car survived without any damage to speak of, the service went smoothly, and we won our class (even if only by like .1 second overall....).



I, too, would like to thank Dan and family for the hospitality friday night. and also Carl and Dave for their work making this happen. I'm so proud to be a part of this. Congrat's guys!!!!

 

here ar soem pictures i got with my iPhone at the end of stage 1 of the Ziptie rally SlowTi!!

 

Congratulations to team Ziptie rally SlowTi ! Very fun watching Carl and Dave come into their first finish control.

Your crew had me a bit worried, though, when I heard they almost burned down the grill.

Have fun at Gravity Park!

Amy

 

they may not be able to service a propane grill but they can definitely fix a SlowTi!

the first ftc was pretty funny - a little confusion on the flying finish probably cost us 3 or 4 seconds

 

:laugh:yeah, that and the 3rd stage when we came up on Olson with the triangles. I know that freaked both of us out:eek4:

I'm still flying high on adrenaline and probably won't come down until we get close to Gravtiy Park, then it will start all over again. :biggrin:

Kinda funny when people kept asking if I got sick....thank goodness I'm an adrenaline freak and just love this kind of stuff!

Bring it!

Thanks to everyone that made this rally happen and huge thanks to our team for supporting us!!!

 

i remember the first time i cam across triangles at ojibwe. it is very disconcerting top see the first time out there. all i remembered was that they asked us to remember the car # and about where they were to tell the finish controll.

normally i am good about recognizing cars but i honestly had no idea what kind of car it was let alone the color. all i rememeber was seeing the OK sign and sort of marking where i saw the car.

 

Carl and Dave reactions?

So Carl and Dave, what did you discover during your first rally experience? Any surprises, or was it exactly what you thought? Easy, hard, fast, slow, cheap, expensive, most fun parts, least fun parts, stuff you forgot, stuff you wasted time on that you didn't need, changes you'll make for next time, etc.?

Jim Cox
#558

 

Where to start?! Being on the competition side instead of the working side is so different - it really gives you an appreciation for the work that goes into a rally so we can tear down a dirt road!

I was very nervous from the point we set-up our service area all the way up until count-down at the start line. Once I launched the car and we hit the road it was all adrenaline! Dan watched our in-car from the first run and he commented on how he could tell through my breathing that I was very wound up on the transit from MTC to ATC.

Our experience doing TSD rallies was a huge help. If we hadn't done any TSDs and familiarized ourselves with the Terratrip and the overall format the day would have been 100 times more stressful.

We encountered very few problems and everything went about as smoothly as we could ask for. Our crew worked well together, Dave and I communicated awesome in the car, we kept the car on the road, didn't break anything and made over 1 minute in improved stage times over the day (from 10.17 to 9.13 i think). I learned a ton about how the car with it's lower power handles at speed and gained a lot of confidence in my ability to predictably control it with Dave's guidance.

We didn't really find many problems throughout the day. There are a few minor car changes (raise the rear coilovers, secure the gas tank guards better). Our service crew came up with a few things they need to change too.

All in all, everything went better than I expected. It's very addictive, that's for sure! The worst part for me was the waiting around which probably won't be as bad now that we've got through this rally.

 

You were slightly pasty and had a short temper. :laugh:




ninja edit

 

oh yea that's right, our terratrip didn't work at first because it was set on probe2 so we freaked out about that for a while

 

^^What Carl said. I can't stress enough how Carl and I seemed to click on stage. Even when I messed up on stage 3 and was lost for a few moments (I hit the interval button too late after an instruction) we didn't miss a beat.

Hardest part? That damn terratrip. I think our cal factor was off a tiny bit so I had to pay extra special attention.

Best part? It was too much fun!! I had the utmost confidence in Carls ability to handle the car which allowed me to focus on my job as the co-driver.

I have to tell ya, it was the best feeling in world watching Carl pick a line, commit to it, and then make it look like he's done it a million times. I'm sure Carl can attest to the numerous times when I yelled "great job, hell yeah!"

Another note- I think we found it helpful to go over the first few instructions as we were sitting in ATC.

Worst part? There wasn't one. the cold hotdogs I ate rallies!?:laugh:

Personally I need to focus more on timing the stage and making sure we have the correct run time.


Service- I'm a control freak. I always want to be the last person touching the car, checking fluids, checking lug nuts. So it was hard for me to NOT touch the car and just relax. But these guys really put me at ease. When we pulled in for service they jumped into action and went through their check list it. Our crew was very professional considering we're all newbs!


We both have a long way to go and much to improve upon, but for our first rally we were lucky and everything went smooth.

 

Hey now - luck had nothing to do with it. I don't allow luck to be a factor when i work on stuff. :laugh:


We were prepared and we stuck to our goals.

 

no kidding! an outsider might have thought we even had a clue.....

 

actually there were a couple comments made about the service crew and how you cats jumped on the car and worked in harmony while we were in service.

 

That's the sort of thing that happens when you have a quality crew chief:wiggle:

 

actually i think it was entirely due to the skills displayed wrenching on some propane grill....not the car:laugh:

 

Good choice to pick the grill! Carrying on the MNSOC tradition of burnt but cold food is imperative!

For your next assignment, practice backing up while following the directions of a spotter. Some teams find it easier to pull straight in and then back out, less chance of running over stuff in your own service area.

Have fun at Gravity Park!