It was 3:45 a.m. when Brycen left his house, and then he drove for two hours to pick me up. An additional four hours of driving took us to a city park in Verona, Wisconsin, for the ten o’clock registration. The parking lot resembled a millennial car meet, with a Skittle-colored smattering of early 2000s Japanese sports cars, as well as new Euro and American offerings filling in the gaps. A full 29 cars started the rally (half of them being first-timers), and we were Car 29.

Brycen and I had won SCCA Land ‘o Lakes Region’s Spring Classic, an event in the CENDiv Divisional Championship, this past May in his 2009 Mini Cooper S. It was a fantastic rally of only four lucky cars, and we were eager to repeat that success at the SCCA Milwaukee Region Spring Scamper on July 27th. I had given him the option of competing in my 1963 Chevrolet Corvair or his Mini, and he wisely chose air conditioning.

Spring Scamper is a Richta GPS Checkpoints rally, which allowed us to use our favorite combination: Rabbit Rally to keep track of time and Richta for scoring feedback. Before the competitor meeting, I sat down to enter every speed change and its mileage into Rabbit’s Stages Editor, then double-checked all the data entry with Brycen. Rabbit automatically changes speeds for you based on mileage, so my job was to provide it with accurate information at the beginning and maintain that accuracy as we drove. Our digital roadbook was ready in less than twenty minutes. We didn’t pay much attention to the newbie-oriented competitor meeting, opting instead to hyper-focus on the warm, humid weather, which was becoming uncomfortable even in the shade.

The start line was probably the highest concentration of white-on-black Road America license plates outside Elkhart Lake, and we got to watch them for almost half an hour before leaving. Sure as the mosquito in my ear, we forgot to zero our odometer at the start line. Our Mini whipped a circle in the parking lot, and we caught Rallymaster Jim Crittenden by surprise on the second round. With smiles and some of our ducks assembled into a row, we headed out.

Stage one start. Deep breath. I told Brycen, “CAST 40, straight at stop half mile, checkpoint at 1.1.” He hit the gas.

Our first checkpoint arrived. Four. We weren’t paying attention. Get it together. Right at stop, Otto Kerl. CAST 35. Left at stop at T. CAST 45. Right on Martinsville. CAST 40. The second checkpoint was a school bus sign at 2.37. Richta proudly proclaimed: fourteen. Fourteen?! I checked the roadbook.

“Left at Stop at T. Pause 15 seconds.”

Navigator failure. We had begun the rally 18 points down for no reason. No need to be upset and miss something else; just fix it and move on. With six taps, I entered the pause in Rabbit in time to catch our next turn, Indian Trail. I updated our mileage at the sign. Checkpoint. Checkpoint. Turn. Checkpoint. Mileage correction. Turn. Turn. Checkpoint. Fourteen miles, sixteen checkpoints, and three mileage corrections later, we entered the transit to our first break. We had managed seven zeroes in a row due to the rally timing to the second, but we also had a really rough start.

Culver’s was packed solid with both rally folks and bewildered families. We grabbed a bite to eat and checked scores. Despite the early blunder, we were in second place with 20 points! We stopped to chat with the Komurka/Komurka team, who had piloted their red New Edge Mustang to the leading placement, only one point ahead of us. They hadn’t checked the scores and were as surprised as we were when they heard their position! Of course, they had to take off soon to hit the CZT restart, so Brycen and I schemed ways to beat them while we walked back to the Mini and began section two.

The hardest part of running Rabbit and Richta simultaneously is getting the scores to align. We had many instances where Rabbit showed 0.5 to over one second different from Richta, but we still managed to squeeze under the one-second threshold most of the time. We were also using phone GPS because our devices refused to connect to the Rabbit Glo GPS box- a problem I neglected to solve after Spring Classic, and which turned out to be a very easy fix. The phone’s GPS we used does come with some limitations, but with second scoring, it wasn’t a huge problem.

Passing the signed entrance to Frank Lloyd Wright’s world-famous Taliesin, we pulled into the next break. An eye-searingly bright red and yellow 1964 International tanker truck greeted us in the parking lot. We checked scores. Still in second. We had picked up a two, a seven, and a few more ones. Car 2, a baby blue BMW M2 of Gelber/Schorer, had wedged into first place. I checked out competitors’ cars and again wondered what we could do to get an edge and take that overall trophy. As with every tour rally, the only correct answer was greater accuracy and consistency.

Still full from the first Culver’s, we continued on with growing confidence and a lot of care. One more missed pause could cost us everything. The course was quite easy to follow, and the speeds were high enough to be interesting without being unnerving. We were having a good time, but we kept the chit-chat to a minimum. Chit-chat has cost me many rallies!

Consistency paid off. We put down zero after zero. Eleven in a row. Five in a row. Ten in a row. We arrived at the finish location with 43 points overall. With fifty-plus people already enjoying their beer and snacks, Car 29’s crew had to find a table at the far back of the dining area. Ever the Wisconsinite, Jim gave me a tall weizen glass to pour my beer into. The glass read “1st”! Palms slapped in the peanut gallery as Brycen and I celebrated our second win in a row, out of the two rallies we’ve run together. I’d say we make a pretty decent team, and perhaps getting up before dawn wasn’t that bad after all.

RReNews Note: More photos will be uploaded from the event…stay tuned!