As I sit here in my familier, slightly overly cluttered home (for the first time in 2009 I might add), staring at the familier grey British skys and thinking interesting thoughts, I try to think of some funny stories from the last couple of weeks but get a strange kind of guilt come over me. For what? I hear you ask. Well, i'll tell you; for leaving my blog unattended for more than ten days or so. Can you believe it. Wierd, a few years back, before blogs, social networks, instant updates and numerous other methods of interupting people while they are trying to get on with something useful, I wouldn't have thought twice about weather people knew where I was or even cared what I was doing. And that might have gone on for months or years, not a mere ten days!
So last you read, I was attempting a road rally in Vermont. Cold, snowy, middle of the night type Vermont. And yes, this was the type of road rally I have virtually zero experience in and the same type of event that everyone figured I would have experience of, measured in years. So to cut to the chase, was it fun? Yes. Did I learn something? Yes. Did I get lost in the middle of the forest somewhere near Canada in minus something crazy temperatures and get found by the bears? No, well not the last part anyway... However I must say, the roads were great and just driving the route without worrying about anything else was a lot of fun,
I won't say i'll rush back to navigate on road rallies, but if you enjoy calculating varying average speeds on the fly whilst measuring time in hundredths of a minite and following 20year old maps combined with John Buffum's somewhat deliberately confusing intstructions, in the middle of the night, I say go for it! And if you succeed, you'll be a better navigator than me, if not co-driver.
After spending a few days back in Boston and stumbling across some great restaurants, taking a walk or two on the beach and pondering my next move before I knew I had to get back to England, all of a sudden the next great opportunity landed right in my inbox. Did I want to compete in the 100AW rally, round 2 of the Rally America series? Of course I did! Having competed on this event for the last three years and each time having a completely different set of weather conditions I knew it would be a challenge. And one I was going to make the most of. After some frantic flight booking and paperwork/venue/personel arranging I flew west and landed in not my favourite city, St.Louis, Missouri. Ok, thats a little unfair, i've just not spent enough time there to bump into things I like, in fact, i've never spent any time there really...
I stepped off the plane and into the evening air and found my way to my hire car. A suitably useless member of staff then tried to charge me 70% more than my quote and then he figured i'd love to pay for a Sat. Nav. system at some extortionate daily rate (maybe he knew about my navigation 'issues' at the road rally?). Nope, little did he know how prepared I was. I had memorised a google maps screen shot and written some seemingly random numbers on some paper which later turned out to be road and junction numbers....clever eh?
The following morning, I headed to our test venue to meet Andrew Comrie-Picard (ACP) and the NOS Energy Drink Rally Team. Our test venue of choice was a 2,600 acre Bison Ranch which just happens to have miles and miles of gravel roads that they let the rally cars loose on once a year. This place, though, is amazing. Family owned and operated, they have over 2000 Bison and ship meat the world over whilst being an amazing corperate events venue and generally a cool place to spend some time.
We had a great test day, the car was faultless and the guys from NOS very much resembled your typical energy drink reps; cool, very exited to be there, great to work with and full of energy and stories!
Heading into the event we were in a positive frame of mind, and as it turns out it was with good cause. A day of recce, 2 intense days of competition, and over a hundred pages of pace notes later, we finished in second place. First time co-driving for Andrew and we had the pace to set fastest times all weekend. Happy with that.
After plenty of celebrations, some, but not much sleep, a drive back to St. Louis, a flight to Boston, 18hrs spent battleing 18inches of snow there, the roughest flight you can imaging back to London, a bus to oxford, then a drive home and a little more sleep, here I am! Refreshed and ready to head north to the next event tomorrow...
More about that later, for now, rest easy....
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