March 16, 2008 CCSCC Rally
Rallymaster: Barry Rowe

The first CCSCC event of the year was held on March 16 by running a rally that was postponed from November 11 of last year! As rallymaster, I was relieved to get it run on such a beautiful day for the 5 teams that ran it and enjoyed a tour of Champaign county, running from the north through Thomasboro, to St. Joseph, to Philo and around to Bondville. With about 80 miles to run, it was a short championship rally, but relatively fast.

When laying out this rally I wanted to make it a little different. I did that by using the “march” command. The ralliest was turning left, then right, then left.... etc. at every opportunity to travel from Thomasboro to the first checkpoint just south of Stanton Center on the Royal slab. That was a pretty easy leg. The next part of the march, which continued after the checkpoint, caused the ralliests to increase and decrease casts at each turn according to a special instruction that specified a different cast change for left and right turns. A phantom check point was just east of St Joe and another checkpoint south of St. Joe. Then there was a phantom checkpoint and a break in Philo, with a quick phantom checkpoint west of Philo and a final checkpoint by the old interurban track west of Bondville. There were several marches included and differing changes in CAST at turns. Except for the trains around St. Joe, the event went pretty smoothly.

At the break in Philo, Joe Siedenberg had calculated ahead that he would be exceeding the speed limit and as safety chair for CCSCC was concerned. I told him not to worry and “don’t think ahead”. Of course I knew that he needed to read the generals, where it was mentioned that any gravel road had a cast of 30, so he should have expected a gravel road to bring the cast down. The last leg did have 2 gravel roads in it,
each about a mile long, which should be traversed at 30 so the increase in CAST with a right or left turn would start again at 30 and increase until the next gravel road or checkpoint.

People seemed to have a good time, I did, and got great help from Jerry White, who did the checkpoint work and calculations. I took pictures! See them at http://roweba.com.

It was great to see Autocrossers Gary, Angela and Sean Patrick, as well as Joe Siedenberg and father-in-law Russ Bedford show up. Usual ralliests included Sandy and Brian Grable; Jim Hamilton and Mike Blackwelder; and James Koltz and Jonathan Flora. Note that Russ Bedford and Joe Siedenberg showed that Autocrossers can be ralliests too, since they scored very low leg scores of a “2” and a “0”. Well done! And no one opened their panic capsule either!

I laid out the rally in October 2007 in my Saturn Vue, but when I checked it out to see if it still worked, I ran it twice in the 89 Corvette! That was even more fun than the Vue and “if a Corvette can make it through those gravel roads, any car can!”

Here are the results.