The article below originally appeared in the Winter 2012 edition of the Detroit Region SCCA newsletter Open Exhaust. At the time, I had had a decent, if not overwhelmingly spectacular, rally Navigator career at the Great Lakes Division levels. I had been fortunate enough to have won POR once before and two Great Lakes Division Championships in Equipped Class as of the end of 2009. Things had grown to a halt by the beginning of 2011, and I was pretty much stuck in neutral by then. As of the end of 2011, it was still unclear whether the event described below would be anything more than a one-off. Yet it ended up being the resurrection of my rally career in ways I could never have imagined: it was the first of six more POR Overall wins in ten years with Scott Harvey Jr., six more Great Lakes Division Equipped Class Championships, one National Tour Championship (based on lifetime points at the time), and two National Tour Championships in Equipped Class. None of that would have been possible had the 2011 POR not happened the way it did, so it has ended up being the most memorable weekend of my rally life.
2011 Press on Regardless – The View from One Navigator’s Seat
Sept 9-11, 2011 (S/F) Indian River, MI
As of the beginning of August, there was no indication that I would be competing in the 2011 Press on Regardless (POR) Rally. Instead, it appeared that I would be working the rally as I had for six out of the previous seven years. The person with whom I normally run rallies, Bruce Fisher, is the organizer of POR, and there had always been an unwritten agreement that if he worked CAST In Stone (my rally), I would return the favor.
On August 4, I received an email from Scott Harvey Jr. The email said that his Navigator from last year was unavailable and asked if I was interested in running this year. Despite the unwritten agreement, Bruce had always said that if a good opportunity to run POR presented itself, I was free to take it. However, there was an issue with the rally equipment. My computer had become too unreliable in 2009, and I had not had the money to fix or replace it. Starting in 2010, Bruce and I had been running in Limited class using his equipment; but obviously, Bruce would want to use his equipment in organizer capacities on POR.
I replied to Scott that I would be interested in running POR, but I would have to look into borrowing or renting a computer from somebody. If that was insufficient, Scott was free to look for someone else to run with. Scott responded that we would run whatever equipment I brought with me to the rally.
After emailing Bruce to tell him that I had a chance to compete in POR this year (his response was, “Go for it” – thank you, Bruce!) I sent emails to people I knew who had computers but might not be running POR. Chuck Hanson, with whom I was going to run a couple of National rallies later in September, agreed to loan me his Timewise 798, and we agreed on a price. Over Labor Day weekend, I went to Indianapolis and picked up the computer from him – it came attached to a nice double clipboard to boot!
I saw the entry list for the first time when I returned home on Labor Day. Even though the overall number of cars was down – one entry loomed largest on the list – Ron Johnstonbaugh and Jack von Kaenel, the team that owned POR (and the Division, for that matter) since teaming up in 2001. Add to this the fact that this was the first time I was running equipped in two years, a 798 in six years, and with Scott in seven years. Cap it off with the possibility that anyone else could win as well, and this was not going to be easy, not that it should have been.
The morning of the rally’s first day, I left home several hours later than expected and thus had to drive straight to Indian River to the start, which goes against my norm of leaving way early and taking in some scenery or a hike along the way. This may have been a blessing in disguise, as this meant there were no distractions beforehand.
As the rally started, Ron and Jack were car 1, and Scott and I were car 2. From the very first control, Scott would go to the control car to get the sticker and slip, and when he got back to our car, he would tell me our score and their score. For the first seven controls, we had two more points than them. Then, on the eighth and final control of section 1, we got a one, and they got a four, so we ended the first section one point ahead of them (five to six). There was another car four points behind us, but after that, this car fell back out of overall contention.
On the first control of the second section, Ron and Jack took a time allowance, and we were in front of them for the rest of the section. Thus, we could not see their scores at the controls for the rest of the section. In that section, we thought we did pretty well by getting three points for seven controls, only to find out that they had one point for the section, so now we were down one point, seven to eight. Oh great, I thought; that’s the sort of thing that usually happens where they start pulling away from the rest of the field.
In the third and final section of the first day, though, we had three points to their four on the first five controls, and we had the same score (all zeroes) on the remaining three controls. So, after the first day of 23 controls, we were tied with 11 points. Bruce had a tie-breaker procedure in place, and they apparently won the tie-breaker for the day. No big deal, I thought; they (especially Jack) may be running for the Division Championship, where the two days were scored separately, but I was not in Championship contention. The big prize for me (and presumably everybody else) was the two-day overall POR win. Nevertheless, if someone had told me beforehand that we would be tied or near the lead after the first day, I would not have believed it.
At the start of the second day, I was as nervous as I had ever been on a rally, which is saying something – so nervous, in fact, that at the end of the odo leg, I had to run into the woods and leave some byproducts of this nervousness. At least, if it had to happen, it happened at the beginning of the day. In the first section of the second day, there was a break after six controls; at that point, we had two fewer points than Ron and Jack, two to four. My God, I thought, is this really happening? Don’t screw it up. For the remaining five controls of the section, we had four points to their three, but it still meant we had a one-point lead after the section.
Starting with the upcoming second section, the remaining three sections of the rally were in the Upper Peninsula, whereas everything before this had been in the Lower Peninsula. In the Upper Peninsula, there are few signs or hard references to compare mileage which can be crucial in Equipped class for determining factors. So basically, you must be dialed in, or lucky, if you see it that way, right from the outset.
There were six controls in the second section, and we were apparently dialed in because we had one point for the six controls. Meanwhile, Ron and Jack had seven points, so we suddenly had a seven-point lead. Somebody wake me up, or better yet – don’t wake me up. However, rumblings were afoot that Jack was extremely unhappy with the fact that they got a four on one control due to a water hole in front of the checkpoint. He considered this an organizational issue due to the wording of the General Instructions. As coincidence would have it, this was the same control that we got our one point for the section. At this point, Scott and I did not consider this to be our problem, at least not yet.
There were nine controls in the third section, and we had the same score of four for the first eight controls. Then, on the last control of the section, the thing that I had been fearing for two days happened. I made a mistake with the odometer and thought I had corrected it, but I had not corrected it. So, as a result, we got a four on the control to their one, which reduced our lead from seven points to four. OK, fine, we still had the lead, but I was still unhappy that I gave them an opening to get back in contention. So we get to the break, and as we get there, Jack is still grumbling about the checkpoint from the previous section. As I saw it, we had given back the three points from that checkpoint on the one checkpoint in the section we just completed and said something to this effect in a way that was ruder than it should have been. A few unpleasantries were exchanged, for which I apologized for my contributions, and Jack accepted. I went to sit in Scott’s car, and when he got in, he was trying to calm me down, which took a while but by the end of the transit zone to start the next section, I was back to the here and now.
Speaking of the next (last) section, I noticed that much of it, or at least the first half of the section, repeated, albeit in the opposite direction, several roads from the second section of the day, where we had one point for the section. Well, this is good, I thought; we just need to duplicate what we did before. And so we did – for the four controls on these same roads, we had one point to their two, so we even got the margin widened from four to five. On the last two controls of the rally, we matched scores with them. After the last control, Scott and I figured out that we had won the 2011 POR even if they tried to file a claim for the control with the water hole because the margin was five points, and if that checkpoint were thrown, the margin would be reduced by only three points. Scott and I congratulated each other after the last checkpoint, and even though not much was said, it was still a happy thirty-plus mile drive back to the finish.
So when we got back to Indian River, the scoring was completed officially, and everything we had thought was confirmed. Trophies were presented, people were congratulated and thanked, and POR 2011 came to a close. Congratulations to Brian Line, Kevin Line; Adam Spieszny, Piotr Roszczenko; Joey Navarre, and Larry Navarre for their Class victories.
Thank you to all the workers and, most of all, to Bruce Fisher for putting on the best POR that I have been involved with as a competitor or worker and again giving me the green light to run this year. And, of course, thank you to Scott Harvey Jr. for giving me the opportunity of a lifetime – this is my second POR win, but it had been eleven years since the first one in 2000 with Dave Parps. I had contented myself for years with that one win and didn’t think it was possible again, especially after many years, bar one of not competing. Congratulations to Scott as well for his third POR victory.
