In one week, Rosie and I will be leaving Denver on our first leg for Seattle. My dad gets in the day before and will join me.
Preparations are coming along well, and the car is looking good mechanically. On a drive up to the Front Range Airport for a car show (that, unfortunately, we never made it to due to terrible organization on their part), the engine felt and sounded smooth, giving me more confidence that it’s ready for the trip. There were a few sounds coming from the back end, but they turned out to be some minor brake rubbing.
I’ll get a real sense of how the car will do on longer distances this weekend when Jeff and I do the Rallye Glenwood Springs. The Rallye is a time-speed-distance (TSD) rally, also known as a precision rally. The goal is to get from point A to point B in a predetermined amount of time, with your score being how many seconds off of a perfect time you arrive at point B (lower is better). The catch is, you don’t know where point B is or how long you have to get there. Instead, you have a list of instructions, including the average speed you should maintain, which, if followed correctly, will deliver you to point B at the correct time. The additional catch is that the instructions include “traps”, points where the written instructions conflict with the Main Road Rule (MRR), a set of rules that define which way to go given no other instructions. The MRR supersedes the written instructions, so the teams that mistakenly follow the written instructions over the MRR will be taken on a detour that will delay them, negatively impacting their score.
That’s where the team dynamics come in. The navigator keeps track of the instructions, time, and distance traveled, relaying them to the driver, and doing the math to see if their average speed is higher or lower than the current segment’s recommended average speed. The driver is responsible for keeping that recommended speed, following directions from the navigator, and relaying information from the road, such as signs or landmarks, back to the navigator. I’m fortunate to have a navigator like Jeff, because he has a great sense of direction, a good mind for math, and the engineering brain to keep the order of instructions straight. Even with no experience rallying, we came in 2nd place in the Novice category a year ago.
Last year, the rally was on the first day, transporting us from Denver to Glenwood Springs. The second day was the Tour, a beautiful drive with a fun quiz/scavenger hunt. This year, the two will be swapped, with the tour directing the transit to Glenwood and the rally as a loop around or out-and-back from Glenwood.
In all, it be 500-600 miles of driving, up and down over mountains, providing a good test for the car. Assuming all goes well, it will give me even more confidence that I’ll be able to make the trip with minimal issues. And if something goes wrong this weekend, I’ll have a couple of days to work it out in the garage, instead of having to fix it on the road.