Sno-Drift Upcoming

Our next stage rally event is Sno-Drift 2012, in Lewiston MI. The event promises to be fairly epic - the rumor I've heard is 24 special stages in 2 days. Last year there were 18, and we didn't feel short-changed then... We'll be looking to put together some of last years first day (2nd in G2) with a little bit of Black River's full-weekend smooth execution, and hope to finish top 5 G2, at the end of the whole weekend. Top 5 all 2wd would be even sweeter.

Quick car update - it's torn down to reveal all damage, and the broken parts tally is a kill switch (odd), 2 engine mounts, 3 engine mount stays, and only a loose lower ball joint to cause the wandering steering (!). It'll be back together in time for the next local rallycross, December 10.

In an attempt to even out the wrenching+expense vs seat time (plus a load of fun), I've managed to pick up a 125cc shifter kart for a great price, and even got it out on track before the season changed too much. So here it is. It's proven to me about 10x more clearly than even rally that being fit, strong and healthy is a huge competitive advantage - and when I can drive this for 20minutes without fatigue I'll be able to drive the rallycar all weekend without straining.

BRS Recap

Heading out!

Been a couple weeks since BRS now, and since Kenneth and I decided it wasn't in our schedules to get more time for LSPR, I've taken the opportunity to see the fall colors from my mountain bike and generally get away from the garage for a week or two. And get a truck, more on that later...

Kenneth said it correctly when we didn't really believe all the NASA schedule rumors (as in, lay out the picnic blanket a couple times a day) - but sitting at what would be the start of the second special stage, with the sun going down and no lights on the car, we began to believe it. The rally was scheduled to start at 3:30, with ~30 miles of stage and transit before the first service...maybe that was part of what I was looking for. It was most important to me to run a smooth weekend, and the breaks certainly made it easy for us in the car, keeping us more rested. If I do another NASA rally I'd bring a camera to prove it.

Thanks to our small but awesome crew, Kyle Steinkamp and Matt Bushore (of Bent Mettle racing, certainly not where he likes to be instead of competing for podium as driver, but a huge asset to us that weekend), the weekend was smooth outside the car as well.

Having finished with no offs, and only 1 close call (those jumps in that video is the wildest it got, tame compared to the number of close calls at sno-drift), it's easy to say we should have driven faster. I've found that we actually did manage to destroy 2 of 3 engine mounts, but hey, the skid plate held it up in there!

So, to recap for now:
BRS Goals: All achieved
1) Find way to both rally AND eat and sleep (= have fun, all weekend)
2) Finish with no driver-error damage
3) Run the car with engine swap and custom electric

Next rally goals: As above, + actually drive fast
Also, with no MAJOR changes planned for the car, I look forward to all the finishing and sorting work which has been put off so far.

Some pictures:



Also I have a truck. It's not pretty, I've promised to keep it's name (Tank), and look forward first to wheel to wheel ice racing this winter enabled by it, not to mention actually being able to go to rally when my previous tows are themselves racing.

Black River Stages - Actually Rallying

I'm lazy so I didn't update yesterday after our first day of rallying in New York. We had heard a lot of stories about waiting around at stage starts during NASA events, but we didn't realize how totally un-exaggerated those stories actually were. At the very first special stage, everybody just sat and waited for nearly an hour because the emergency crews weren't in place yet to be able to run the stage. We waited around a lot more than that at other stages, though one time was because two Evo X's went off badly enough on SS4 that the stage was canceled. In the end, we only ran 4 of the 9 planned stages. So...that was disappointing, but a good way to get familiar with rally again.

Here we are leaving Parc Exposé

Day 2 was more interesting, though we still ended up with a stage cancellation due to delays. The stages were really exciting though, with some big air on the first two stages and some fast but fairly technical elements on the other three. There was a lot more waiting around too, which can be fun when used to socialize with our fellow rallyists, but not as cool when it causes a stage cancellation.

One of the most exciting stages was Goose Pond which is known for being pretty heavy on the jumps. It did not disappoint. At one point, we ended up so detached from the ground that we had no chance of correcting our trajectory and ended up shooting off toward the side of the road. Sean had the wherewithal to correct it though, and I didn't really understand the severity of the situation until I watched this video. Excuse the terrible camera placement that heavily overemphasizes the importance of the rear view mirror...

Crazy jumps at about 0:30

As much as I'm complaining about missing a stage though, we ended up being very lucky that the stage was canceled because our fuel gauge lied to us and we ran out of gas while on the transit back to service. If we had tried to run the final stage, we would have ended up with a DNF. Which would have sucked. Thanks to Michael Hall and Carl Lynn in the super badass Mitsu Mighty Max for flat towing us back to the finish of the rally.


The adventure wasn't over though, as when scores were posted, we were showing up as last place by a MASSIVE margin due to a one hour (!) penalty. The penalty notice said "At TC14B was due at 16:39:00 but arrived at 15:39:00." This was ridiculous because it meant that we traveled at least 30 minutes back in time during service, so I filled out an inquiry form to get that changed. I didn't really know how to state it, so I did it bluntly.

This actually worked

So we got our hour back and ended up finishing in 3rd place in Open 2WD Light, just a single second out of second place. I'm happy with it though.


The other thing is that this was Dmitriy's first rally in his new car and on the suspension that I built, so I was being paranoid and asking him about it after every stage. It seems to be holding together just great and Dmitriy has been saying that it's performing well, so that was a huge relief.

Gorgeous car!

They ended up third in Open 2WD Heavy, so overall this rally was a great success! Huge thanks to our crew chief, Kyle Steinkamp, and our transporter/random advice giver Matt Bushore for getting us through this weekend.

Black River Stages - Day 0

After a long-ish tow through Canada, we've arrived safely in some part of New York. I'll go look for it on a map now.

I suppose it looks something like this

Thanks to Matt Bushore for towing us out in his pretty scary ambulance over such hazardous terrain as narrow-ish bridges and Toronto traffic. Some nice scenery though, especially over these "Thousand Islands."

There's a thousand of them! All apparently inhabited by rich people

Upon reaching our destination, we put some stickers on the car and got it through tech with minimal hassle. Then, we sat through a 3 hour long novice orientation which was surprisingly helpful and entertaining.

Tomorrow, we don't have to get to Parc Expose until 2 PM, so we have some time to sleep in and work on the car. Unfortunately, we discovered that our skidplate doesn't quite clear the new motor's oil pan and we have some loose relay connections that make our lights stop working. So luckily we have some time to fix these things and hopefully shop for some snacks. Yum.

Sean has mandated that everyone have fun, so...wheeee!!!

Busy gap, Black River Stages in 1wk

It lives! Tonight I drove the GTI, with the new-to-me 9A 2.0l and new-to-the-world body harness with way awesome switchpanel (and hopefully, improving from garbled stock wiring, way awesome reliability for all projects to come). This is cutting it very close considering that we need to pack up next Wednesday night, something which has been both a source of stress and motivation. (what if the new trans was bad or engine has fundamental damage which I didn't know about? etc - - but it is OK so far!)



See also the glimpse at the new gauges and switchpanel, and shove your face into the cat on that video...um, catalytic converter...displacing the muffler because the header displaced it! That thing REALLY trumpets under load, pretty smooth sounding at speed.

I think Kenneth and I have been putting ~20 hours a week into that car for the past three weeks, heh, or that's what it feels like. Because now it's go time: we're going to Black River Stages next week in Watertown NY. Matt Bushore will be towing us out with his terrifying ambulance rig, we're all signed up and paid, and the hotel doesn't know what's about to hit it (a lot of really tired people, that's what...)

Dmitriy, who's been our fearless crew chief, is returning to his permanent role - which is driver for his own car. We've been lucky to have him, but we're really excited to run with him on stage, especially with his sweeet new suspension, I don't know how we're going to keep up! (of course, see below post for Dmitriy's new suspension). But - we're very excited to have the intrepid Kyle Steinkamp with us again, he'll be our crew chief, and between him and Matt we'll be in good hands. My goal is to finish with no major damage to the car (or at least, due to driver error). I've gone through a rear suspension each rally so far, so at least, I want to finish with intact rear wheels...

Stay tuned, we'll have many updates, pictures and video in the next two weeks!

Sno*Drift 2011: More Videos

We made it back home today after a leisurely drive back to Ann Arbor. I'm happy to be home, and I'm sure that my memories of the rally will become fonder as time passes. As it is, I'm half thinking that rally sucks. It's so hard, and I'm not even driving! But I did really enjoy it too, so it's not like I'm going to quit.

Anyway, thanks to Chris for pointing us to a video of our big off from SS14. You can see it here starting at about 7:50



I also uploaded our in-car footage of that entire stage, so you can see what we saw starting at about 6:30 in this video.



Thinking back to it, we really should have just had the spectators push us out and we would have been able to finish the stage, but we're still new to this, and we still would have lost a ton of time in service anyway. It's unlikely that anything would have made our sloppy second day much better.

Sno*Drift 2011 Day 3: SS8 to SS18

We were feeling really good about our results from yesterday, but we were also concerned that with the significantly faster stages today, our power disadvantage would really manifest itself. We definitely weren't able to keep up the blistering pace that we had yesterday.

Even as co-driver, and knowing what corners were coming up, I was just deathly afraid that I'd mis-count the crests and not tell Sean to slow for tight corners when we were going 80-90 mph down long rolling straightaways. Luckily, that didn't happen even though it just meant that we were a little more cautious than we actually needed to be.

Sean had his own problems, as he woke up feeling a bit nauseous and this lasted through most of the day. He couldn't eat or drink without feeling worse, but of course not eating and drinking also made him feel pretty bad.

After establishing that Sean wasn't as comfortable going super fast, we merely went pretty fast. So we weren't way up in the standings like we were yesterday, but we still did ok.

The first service was not terribly eventful, and we ended up just putting on some chemical toe warmers while the crew looked the car over a little. Then we all went over to the Super Special Stage in the Buttles gravel pit. This was a lot like a rallycross, so it was somewhat familiar territory. It was pretty rough though at least right at the beginning, and it may have led to this:

We did pretty well in the Super Special Stage, but after that, things got a little bit sketchier. At the very end of SS14: Camp 8, we were headed downhill toward a very tight right hander, but we didn't slow nearly enough and ended up slamming into a snowbank sideways at 60+ mph. That was terrifying and we both thought we were going to roll the car. Also, we were only about 100 yards from the finish. Luckily, we only debeaded one tire, so we promptly got to work fixing that. Additionally, we happened to be in a huge spectator area with a commentator who said something like "the co-driver can run down the road and get a time," so I did. Running in the snow sucks, and then when I got to the control, they told me that that wasn't actually a rule. Luckily, as I was headed back, I noticed that Sean had gotten the car back together and was coming to pick me up. We ended up losing about 10 minutes on that stage.

The next stage, the 15 mile long Camp 30 was nearly as scary. Again, down a hill into a hard and icy right hander without slowing enough, and we smacked a snowbank with the left side of the car again. This snowbank must have been a bit harder, because now the car didn't drive quite right and made terrible noises when the left rear suspension was compressed. We finished out this crazy long stage and had a look, and we noticed that the wheel suddenly had around 8 degrees of positive camber. We didn't have much choice but to finish the next stage before going to service, so that's what we did.

We texted the crew to look for a new rear beam and rear axles. By the time we got back to service, they had obtained some extra parts from Matt Bushore and we were all ready to fix the car. All of the crew was involved as well as people who weren't even part of our crew like Matt and a couple of spectators who we happened to know. We went way over time on our service, but got the beam, stub axles and brake rotors replaced within an hour, just in time to be able to continue the rally. Like I said before, our crew is amazing.

We finished out the last two stages with some cautious driving just so we could actually finish the rally. Results for the day weren't nearly as good as yesterday's, but we were excited just to finish. I think we did pretty well for our first rally, and just a couple of mistakes in the second half cost us an obscene amount of time. At least we're going home with 2nd place in G2 for the Sno Regional Rally. Next event hopefully will be the New England Forest Rally in July. We'll be making a lot of changes before that event, so watch the blog for details!

Sno*Drift 2011: 2nd in G2!!

Results are here for the Sno Regional Rally, which is just on Friday. We're 2nd Place in G2!! Unfortunately, I screwed up the very first ATC, which cost us a minute, which is the difference between 1st and 2nd place. Still. 2nd place is pretty sweet. Also we're 5th overall for the regional rally.

Here are results for the National guys. We're sitting in 3rd overall for Sno*Attack (you can't actually see that directly. So if Sean just drives smooth, fast and clean like yesterday, we have a very very good shot at being in the money for Sno*Attack, and even possibly taking the lead for the Drift Regional Rally (which is just Saturday).

I'm still working on the video upload because YouTube hates me.

2011 Sno*Drift Day 2: Stages 1-7

We kicked off the morning by attending another mandatory novice seminar, and then we tried to rush to the Practice Stage in the half hour or so that we had left. We got there with 15 minutes to spare and promptly found that we had low pressure in one of our tires, so we spent the whole 15 minutes seeking out a team that would "lend" us some air and eventually didn't get to do practice. Bleh.

While we were gone, our crew found us a really good spot for service in Lewiston, just outside of a nice restaurant/bar. We all hung out in service for a bit as Brandon and Dmitriy cooked up some food and made some coffee.

We were both pretty anxious to get going, so we were pretty happy when it was time to leave Parc Exposé on our way to the first stage.

The stages were great, and we were going even faster than I expected after recce. After a couple of wild corners on SS1, Sean got the hang of driving on the surface and we started going really fast. In fact, we had to make two passes on stage, which was exciting. Here's a video of us running SS3: East Fish Lake.



Somewhere in the middle, we get caught out behind an Open Light Subaru and after some frustration, we passed them in a huge spectator area. It was pretty exciting. By the time we got back to service, everybody had heard about this story and it had really grown in scale. Now people thought that we entered the corner side by side and we almost hit them...and they were 12 feet tall and ate children! It was crazy. We rolled back into service after the infamous Ranch stage which is rough and tight, and really didn't have a lot for the crew to do. The car held up great. We pretty much installed and aimed the lights and checked that all parts and fluids were still present (they were).

And off we went on the night stages. Halfway through SS6 Greasy Fishlab (I love that name), I started feeling a little bit motion sick which sucked. Then, we had a very short transit to SS7 Orchard Lake so I had no time to recover and then we embarked on the longest stage of the rally. I managed to survive and Sean drove admirably with my kind of distant note-reading. I made it all the way to the control at the end of the stage and politely asked if I could use their woods. That sucked, but at least I didn't throw up in the car. I think I'll put on a new Scopolamine patch tonight.

Now we're all very tired, and we resume the second half of the rally tomorrow morning with Parc Exposé in Atlanta at 8AM. I'm excited but apprehensive. Rally is hard. The results haven't been published as of the writing of this post, but I'll try to get them up when they get posted.

Day 1: registration, tech inspection, and recce

We thought we were early when we showed up for recce late registration at 7:30am this morning, maybe even that we'd have time to grab some breakfast. But instead we surprised the volunteers at registration with our intention, and when they had that figured out, they were rushing to get us out in time! Recce is pre-running the stages, at legal speeds and in a non conspicuous car, to get an idea of the course and to clarify the stage notes. This means driving over two days worth or roads, more miles than the trip up in the first place.

So after 6 hours of sleep, no shower food or drink, and what turned into 5.5 hours of driving stages, we finally got a 20min break at Subway. Then we drove for another 2.5 hours until 5pm. Wow, shower and dinner was appreciated, recce is a lot of work. Thankfully, Kyle and Cory took the car to tech, 3rd car through and surrounded by the factory teams. The horn was called "weak and feeble" by the head inspector, but otherwise sailed through.

But the stages look great, it seems there's an interesting technical theme the first day, and a more open and higher speed second day. I'm sure the roads will get swept down, and it won't be as soft as today when the temps go down to the high teens this weekend, but it's no skating rink. And I'm looking forward to driving without cringing at every rut. I thought I might garage the R32 for the winter when I first bought it, certainly nothing like this:

Rally #2, Post #1

We're here and we're ready. And it sounds so simple! Of course, the suspension rebuild after LSPR took as long as it could (ramping up as the rallycross and Sno-Drift approached), and the assorted mechanical prep will always be significantly more involved than expected, but the car is straight, seems reliable, and drives correct.

But that's less than half the trouble. The other half, and just as critical, is the planning, structure and support. And I've needed and gotten more help and support than I imagined I ever would. For the second rally in a row, we have the best crew at the event. Dmitriy is bringing his truck, it's full of our stuff - he just had to go to work like a normal person. Brandon's joining, and between the two of them, they plan on providing grilled food (with vegetarian options) and coffee at each service. Kyle is returning to crew, right now he's still an hour out, on his way down from Houghton on his own. Cory says he's just mooching, but he's driven the rallycar halfway, and he'll be joining Kyle getting us registered and getting the car through tech while Kenneth and I casually stroll around the stages tomorrow for recce.

So, thanks to all the help from our friends, we're ready to run Sno-Drift. Thanks to an even larger circle, we were able to run LSPR. Without the help, I'd still be running my daily driver in rallycross. Good start, let's see how far we can take it.

Sno*Drift 2011: Day 0 (?)

Today, we made our way up to Lewiston, MI for the 2011 Sno*Drift Pro Rally. We decided to try our luck a bit by driving the rally car up rather than hauling it on a trailer. However, we are also planning on participating in recce, so we brought Sean's 2004 Golf R32 as well. Sean and I were leaving from different places, so he entrusted the R32 to me for the day and we met up about an hour into the journey. I also picked up a friend of ours from the University of Michigan Cycling Team, Cory Dubrish, who wanted to come up to Sno*Drift to spectate his first rally. This was handy for us because he, along with Kyle Steinkamp (half of our LSPR crew) would be able to take the car through tech tomorrow while we're out recce'ing.

This was also convenient because driving the rally car, well, sucks. So we had another person to lay this burden upon, except that Cory thinks that driving the rally car is cool. Win win! I ended up driving the R32 the whole way up (not a bad deal, as it's super quiet and comfy) and Sean and Cory switched off in the rally car. Here's Cory struggling with the belts. He's a little bit bigger than either of us.


The trip was generally uneventful, and we showed up a the Sheridan Valley Motel just before 10 PM. We even got to sign the proprietor's Sno*Drift poster, so that was cool. Signing stuff is still very novel to me. We gave Cory a quick rundown on what to expect in tech, and now we're just waiting on Kyle to arrive from way up there in Houghton. We're excited about recce. Here's a picture of the two VW's.

Lucky HANS

Two pieces of exciting news:

1. I ordered myself a HANS head and neck restraint. I ordered and paid for the cheap FRP HANS Sport, but somehow I scored the super sweet double-expensive carbon fiber HANS Professional. I also now have sliding tethers so I can finally look around while I'm in a racecar. Awesome!

2. The blog is now up to date! Hopefully all updates from now will be live rather than in retrospect like all of my posts today have been.

Lake Superior Pro Rally - Part 3: The Recovery

We didn't want to make the long drive back to Kenton to get the car out of the woods in the dark, so after a couple of phone calls confirming that we weren't in some sort of deep wilderness tow-away zone, we decided to retrieve the car on our way back home. Armed with a come-along and a ridiculous plan, we headed back to Passmore.

Here's where we went off. The tire tracks in the middle of the photo are ours. This is about where we stopped.


And here's how we found the car. Apparently the lug bolts had all sheared off between the hub and the wheel spacer.


We "re-attached" the wheel by crossthreading a couple of bolts back in, and started pulling it back onto the trailer with the come-along. The wheel was obviously not mounted true.


This took about an hour, but at least the whole hour was hilarious. In that last pic, the car is being held up by that jack in the lower right and an assortment of tree branches that Dmitriy had found (visible to his left). Finally, to get it home safely without tossing a wheel at some poor motorist on the highway, we fastened the wheel back to the hub with a ratchet strap.


Then we drove home. In the end, a disappointing rally but still great fun and a very valuable learning experience. We'll be back at Sno*Drift hopefully with a car that doesn't fall apart!

Lake Superior Pro Rally - Part 2: The Rally

After a good night's sleep, we were ready for the big show. Unfortunately, LSPR was reduced to a one-day rally for 2010, but it was a pretty long day with nearly 260 total miles, 90 of which are on stage. Sean and I spent some time in the Novice Competitor Seminar while our awesome crew tied up a few loose ends before Parc Exposé. Parc Exposé had a totally different feel as a competitor than it did when I had spectated in the past. For example, a little kid came up to Sean and me to ask for our autographs on his shirt! He was actually just asking everybody in a race suit, but I still thought it was awesome. Here's a shot of us leaving Parc Exposé:


Here are the highlights:

Parc Exposé->SS1:Green Acres: Somewhere around our out-time, we left Parc Exposé and headed over to the beginning of the first stage. We had somehow neglected to do an odometer calibration beforehand, so we used that transit as our calibration, which ended up working perfectly. Sweet.

Green Acres 1: Our first competition stage. Green Acres was basically a giant rallycross set up in the Moyle Gravel Pit. We started off the stage Ok, but I very quickly got lost in the notes and told Sean to ignore me. I thought I knew where I was a couple of times but was dead wrong. This was embarassing. The next thing I know, we're getting waved down by the workers at the finish who are getting bigger in the windshield at an alarming rate. "Didn't your navigator tell you where the finish was?" they hollered at us. "Um...we're new at this." That sucked. Now I was worried that I was going to botch this co-driving thing all day.



Green Acres->Houghton Service: We were still a little confused after finishing Green Acres, so we just drove to the end of the gravel pit. This was a bad idea. Turns out the notes start right from the finish, so I was already lost on the transit. Great. So we drove back to service because we knew where it was, but it turns out we were supposed to enter from the other side where a fueling depot had been set up. Workers in service were wondering what we were doing going the wrong way through service. Oops.

Herman 1: Our first stage in the woods. Lots of fun, even hit some sweet jumps! Um...I got distracted by that first jump and didn't call out a hard left in time and we ended up sliding off the road a bit. We didn't hit anything big, but the car got jostled a bit. Finished out the stage, including a really wet section by the end, where we hydroplaned by two cars that had gone off. The GTI took it like a champ, only letting a little bit of water into our footwells.


Menge: Uneventful stage. I'm starting to get the hang of navigating, Sean is beginning to drive a little more based on what I say (which is scary). I think we're both a bit more comfortable in our roles. This stage is beautiful and I'm sad that I couldn't find photos of us on it.

L'Anse Service: Did I mention that our crew was awesome? We pulled into our very well-chosen and roomy service spot where Dmitriy and Kyle had lunch ready for us as well as drink refills. Sean said he was noticing some weird rear suspension behavior, so he decided to pull the right rear hub and stub axle (which he is an expert at). With a little help from Ryan Thompson of Thompson Racing Fabrication, the corner was back together with a brand new stub axle in about 10 minutes. Basically, I went to the Rally America truck to figure out where we had been re-seeded and by the time I got back, we had a new corner. Amazing stuff, really.

Herman 2: Same mistake as last time, though Sean vaguely remembered and I didn't (dammit!) so it was pretty minor. I need to make notes on stage when I screw things up. We managed to stay on the road this time around though.


Passmore: Here's where things got interesting. I had written things like "FAST!" and "GO GO GO!" in my notes in many places on this stage, and it certainly lived up to that. We were going really fast. Suddenly, I look up for the next corner and we're sliding through the leaves off the right side of the road. I'm not too alarmed, thinking to myself, "Oh, Sean just overshot the corner a little and we're getting back on the road," as I keep diligently reading the notes. Turns out this wasn't the case as I looked up again to see us narrowly miss a tree on the right side and then come to a stop as the ditch gets deeper and tilts the car to an unsettlingly steep angle. Sean says "The wheel came off" with surprising calm about him and we run out to set up triangles. Apparently the right front wheel came off and ended our rally. It's scary in retrospect, but I didn't even notice anything when it happened.

So we sat out the rest of the stage (obviously), and at one point, Sean went wandering about to find the wheel that had been launched into the woods at around 70 mph. We eventually got towed out by sweep and the car was left by the roadside because we wouldn't be able to recover it in time for the second running of the stage in a couple of hours. A very helpful volunteer drove us out of the stage back to the Kenton Service where we broke the news to our crew (which had grown to include Jon Tinsey, who was kind enough to drive us back to Houghton).

Lake Superior Pro Rally - Part 1: The Lead-Up

On to the fun stuff. Our first stage rally was the Lake Superior Performance Rally held way the hell up in Houghton, MI. Sure, it's the same state but it's ridiculously far away. We could have driven to Florida in the time it took us to get to Houghton. We were lucky enough to round up a stellar crew for the rally, consisting of Dmitriy Martynov, a fellow rallycrosser, autocrosser and stage rallyist as well as Kyle Steinkamp, who is a real rally enthusiast with some crew experience. Kyle's a student up at Michigan Tech in Houghton too, so that was actually very helpful. Dmitriy was kind enough to provide his Tundra as a tow/service vehicle, so with the four of us in the truck, the bed full of junk and the rally car on a rented U-Haul trailer, we made the trek up to Houghton.

We left on Thursday evening, and drove about 4 hours to Mackinaw City at the northern tip of Michigan's Lower Penninsula. We then slept a little, and in the morning, crossed the Mackinac Bridge into the Upper Penninsula. Which is Gorgeous. We stopped at a scenic spot for some fresh air, a look at the coast and some photos.


When we finally got to Houghton, we checked into our hotel, unloaded the car and went through registration and tech surprisingly quickly. After a nice lunch in Houghton, we made our way to the surprisingly-hard-to-find practice stage where we finally got to see what this whole rally thing is all about. I felt a little silly reading the same directions four times in a row as we drove what was essentially a rallycross, but it was a great exercise to get acquainted with the notes so we both could associate the words with actual road features. Here we are getting ready for the practice stage:


After practice, we had dinner and went on a rampaging shopping spree to prepare for the next day. We got all kinds of things like hi-liters, a little file pocket, lights, and my favorite item, a purple Barbara's Way by Stanley tool bag.

Motion Sickness Revisited

With LSPR coming up, I had to get this motion sickness thing figured out. Apparently (and unsurprisingly), motion sickness is an oft-discussed problem in navigators' circles, though most just suggest Dramamine or Bonine, both of which have failed me miserably in the past. On a sailing website, I came across an over-the-counter drug called Marezine, so I ordered some from Amazon (couldn't find it locally for some reason), and asked Sean to hurl the car around with me sitting shotgun and reading a book. That didn't work so great. Ok...so now I needed prescription strength stuff. I went to my doctor and he recommended a transdermal Scopolamine patch. It goes behind my ear and infuses my brain with drugs that make my inner ear not work or something like that. We did the reading/driving test again, and it was much better. So we were counting on that to work for LSPR. SPOILER ALERT! It worked like a champ, and I didn't feel a hint of motion sickness the whole time I was reading notes during LSPR.

My Role In This Nonsense

Then, for some reason, I decided to ask Sean if I could navigate for him. I thought it would be fun, I suppose? What you have to understand is that I've never met a single person who suffers from motion sickness to a greater degree than I do. Sometimes I start feeling a little woozy while I'm driving myself around. That's just wrong. So of course I knew this, but I figured that even though every over-the-counter medication I had tried before had been completely ineffective, I'd find something that would work for this task that involves being violently tossed around in a car while reading a book in my lap. So...I put that off for a little bit. More on that problem later.