Lanark Highlands Forest Rally

Well, it's done - I finished, sorta. Or sorta not. I drove until the car died. It was raining and it doesn't quite like the rain. We finished 4 out of 6 stages. It quit on the 5th. BUT - unlike at the rally of the Tall Pines at the end of 07, after the engine swap - the car ran beautifully, up until it quit that is. Considering I hadn't run it at all for more then a year, I was satisfied. We could say the car ran better then I did. I was rusty for sure. Evan and I (Evan was my borrowed co-driver. He usually runs in the Lada with Jon Strack) forgot a few things which made a difference. 1st, neither of us remembered to bring a book in which to write out our notes (notes: the descriptions of each curve in the road which we write out before the rally during a couple pre-passes). This meant we woudl run using only a very basic set of instructions provided by the organizer. Okay, we thought - they did it in the olden days and went much faster then us. One catch - I also forgot how to calibrate the odometer we would need in order to make even these rudimentary instructions useful. The result - we ran the first couple stages completely blind (as they say in rally - without any info about the road more then what I could see). Our times were slow to say the least. I am not ashamed to say I am chicken. I also always have this thought at the back of my head when completing; "how long will it take me to fix this if I smash it up". Not really a good competition state of mind, oh well. We did do better as the day went on. When Evan was able to borrow another competitors notes (thanks Paul and Steven) I drove way better (Evan is quite good at knowing when to call the next turn in the road). to be continued...