The Adventures of a Rally Roadie

The day is supposed to be easy after yesterday’s grind to Whitehorse. How hard can 2 very short TSDs and an ice race be? Hard enough.

The first TSD starts in a parking lot off a roundabout on the edge of downtown Whitehorse. We’ve already learned that starting a TSD can be tricky.  We’re running on public roads so we have to deal with traffic and if the rally starts at rush hour (even in a small town like Whitehorse) you have to contend with traffic stopping you from keeping the pace that you need to maintain.

At the start, I kept watching the traffic to see if there would be a break to slip in and get started on time. (If you are concerned you get out early and wait for the rally clock to pass and then start late.) We leave the start behind the last car in a line of traffic. We are turning right and the entire line of traffic except the car in front of us turns left. We pull up to the entrance of the bridge across the river and the car in front of us stops and waits, and waits, and waits. FOR 45 SECONDS!!!! We are so far behind on a 4 mile TSD that we are really screwed unless I really blast some speed and get caught up. We turn left off the bridge. I stand on the throttle. The behind time starts to drop. I keep accelerating.We’re starting to catch up. Yvon screams, “You missed the left! Turn around and take the first right!” Even more behind. I take the right and start pouring on the speed. In the next mile, I get the Behind time to zero and we try to calm down for the rest of the TSD.

Keeping zero time for even the next few miles is very hard after making such a bad start. In the last mile, we can’t find a marker for the last CAS change. An experienced team would have just made the CAS change based on our mileage. But we are just starting to get confident in our equipment and we blow the last CAS change.

We pull into line for the return TSD. We find out that a lot of us missed the first tuen AND the last CAS change. Maybe we didn’t do that badly. We do the return TSD without and drama and head off to the Ice Race.

The ice race is run on a frozen lake just outside of Whitehorse. We drive out on to the lake and the timing people stop us. “Take a recon lap and then get in line on the straight behind us. Remove the geasr from your roof and get back in line here for two laps at speed.” Okay. No problem. We start the lap and I’m mostly interested in how much grip there is. Not much. At the end of the lap, we slide off the exit and stuff the car in a snow bank. A pickup comes up almost immediately and tows us out. His parting words: “I better plow some more room at the exit of that turn.”

I don’t know anything about ice racing but this doesn’t  look that different. The course is a loop that starts with a right 90 followed by a long straight. The straight ends in 2 sets of double esses. Then a right sweeper into a flying finish straight. The first set of esses aren’t too slippery. The next set so what more so. The final sweeper might as well be oiled. It’s so slippery that it’s almost impossible toturn without nearly stopping. And then when you go to the power, the car immediately goes into a tank slapper.

I run the two laps and not too badly. At least I don’t stuff the car and actually finish both laps. We can take two more laps with Yvon driving but he declines. “I want to make sure we get to Inuvik. Me crashing the car in the ice race won’t help.” We take our times and hope for the best. We reload the car and leave for Dawson.

First a stop at a car wash to clean off 3 days of mud. The some lunch. Then we hook up with Dick and Marie and head up the Alcan to the turn off for the Klondik. It’s a 350 mile ride but it’s wide and easy and we’re soon doing 80-85 on the way up the road. Not too many slippery parts and almost no traffic. The road has been widened and it’s a boring but fast drive. We’re in Dawson City by 5:30 PM.

In good rally fashion, the MTC (Main Time Control) is in the bar of the night’ds hotel. We have to sign in every night or get still another penalty. The sign in is also the time when we get any news about the next day’s route and our scoring for the day. Surprise! Our scores in the TSDs areokay with the exception of the first check point on the first TSD. We score 22 for both of the TSDs and that’s with a 12 on the first check point! If we hadn’t blown the start so badly we’d have had a great score in the TSDs. All in all, not too bad.

The ice race times are better Wthan I thought they’d be. The times are in the upper half of the field – 9th in the first race and 7th in the second. I’m surprised and very happy. Not bad for an old road racer who’s never done an ice race.

We spend a couple of hours in the bar with the entire group. Telling war stories, drinking beer and eating dinner. Everyone is up and we’re all having a great time. Off to bed. We’re up early in the morning to make sure that we do as much of the drive to Inuvik in daylight as possible. The road can be very difficult with blowing and drifting snow. And that can be a real epic in the dark. Up early and get going.

C8-)