CSCC 2019 Saturday Series Season Standings

The sun came out early Saturday morning making for a pleasant drive through the Clark County hills for the twelve teams of road ralliers that had assembled for the start of the May event.  Flashback to last year and it was heavy rain and high winds with checkpoint signs blowing over.

Rallymaster Kevin had constructed  a lengthy event with 7 controls covering about 120 miles.  Scenery was top notch with gorgeous views of Mt. St. Helens and the Columbia River.  Roads were 100% paved with many a twist and turn.  But this was no walk in the park. On the Saagerpaloosa difficulty scale, we rate this one a challenge. The first couple of legs were pretty straight forward. 

The third leg included several opportunities to execute a NOTE to “PAUSE at each YIELD”. However, since all the opportunities were at railroad crossings which are not intersections, if you paused at the three crossings, you earned 30 penalty points. The fourth leg offered a mileage trap (CAST 41 for 0.75 miles at “NEXT 1 ½ MILES”) worth 24 points.

Leg 6 spelled doom for most teams. The leg opens with an ONTO GREEN instruction, followed by an ITIS instruction to TURN on SHIRLEY GORDON. The trap is sprung when your first encounter with Shirley is as an opportunity to drive straight on SHIRLEY GORDON. We all know you can’t TURN by going STRAIGHT, so you refuse the ITIS (at that encounter) and continue to stay ONTO GREEN. You max early if you miss this – and some did. Those who did this trap correctly still had to make it through some confusing intersections, following GREEN wherever it went, eventually finding the correct opportunity to TURN on SHIRLEY GORDON. Half the teams that maxed Leg six also maxed Leg seven.

Only the second rally of the season and teams were working on regaining their skills.  With longer legs, scores tend toward the higher side with nearly one-third of the leg scores timing in over the three minute max.  Many of those came from the last two legs with every team getting at least one max with one exception.  The Novice team of Twyla Blanksma and Chris White scooted through legs six and seven with a combined total of 192 about half of the next closest team.

The SOP team of Bill and Kelly Ferber also displayed the agony and the ecstasy with maxes on legs four and six but a zero on leg five.

Storming to victory by more than a minute and a half was Sean and Brandon Andersen in the SOP class.  Well done gents!  Paul Eklund and Yulia Smolyensky took first in Unlimited and Mark and Mike Heriford took first in Novice.

Rallymaster Simon Levear delivered a great season opener with the April 13 Saturday Road Rally.

The course offered beautiful scenery and fun-to-drive roads, including a lap around Hagg Lake, ending in Cornelius. Although the route was easy to follow, the TRAP TRANSIT section was tricky. Six route instructions offered two optional actions: A or B. One was correct (zero points) and one wasn’t (50 points).

First overall was the Unlimited team of Rebecca Ruston and Russ Kraushaar. Second in Unlimited and second overall was the team of Paul Eklund and Brandon Harer. Larry Anson and Fran Hanchek finished third overall and first place in the SOP class. Eric Olbricht and Alexander Olbricht took first place Novice.

Did I mention the TRAP TRANSIT was tricky? NRI 50 made the difference between the top two teams. At a four-way intersection, the road straight ahead had a back-facing stop sign, the road to the right had a back-facing stop sign, and the road to the left did not have a back-facing stop sign. MRD 3.3 PROTECTION directs you to take the “single road which leaves the intersection without a back-facing stop or yield sign on it”. If you went left you correctly executed part B of the instruction for zero penalty points.

Most teams tripped on NRI 53, also a main road trap. You are on an unpaved road, when you encounter an intersection with three apparent choices: straight ahead is paved, the road on the right is marked “dead end” (not a rally road), and the road on the left is unpaved. MRD 3.4 SURFACE says, “The main road is the obvious continuation beyond an intersection of the road with the same type of surface as that which you approached the intersection on." If you went left to stay on the unpaved surface you correctly executed part B of the instruction for zero penalty points.