Rallymaster Brandon Harer delivered a “lightly trapped” romp through the foothills of Mt. Hood, on this month’s Cascade Sports Car Club Saturday Series Rally, Saturday, July 17th. The Barn Finds route traveled from its start at Milwaukie Lowe’s to Orient, Corbett, Bull Run, and Zig Zag and ended at Paola’s Pizza Barn in Sandy. The 100-mile drive took about 3 1/2 hours to complete including a mid-rally break. The route crossed the Sandy River six times and provided spectacular scenery and fun-to-drive roads.
What the rallymaster said:
Sometimes it does pay off to use roads close to home that you’re familiar with. The CSCC Rallymaster Guide recommends this and reiterates that you’ll be driving them many times. The end odometer calibration location was a brand new housing subdivision about a mile from my home. A grid of freshly paved roads that will soon have new homesites. I had originally planned on popping over to take photos of the first several cars as they began the timed section headed for the first passage control. Then head home and observe the rally progress from the Richta Rallymaster app’s map, fielding any calls that may come in.
The phone rang. Just as I was pulling out of the driveway, Car 1 asks “You intended for cars to go down 40th Street?”
These construction crews don’t work a typical 5-day workweek, it turns out. Several construction vehicles, a cement truck in particular, happened to be pouring sidewalks right between NRI 16 and NRI 17 thus completely blocking the route where teams would be validating their odometer mileage against the Rallymaster’s. End calibration at “STOP” then left, then left on 190th? Where’s 190th? Which stop signs are we supposed to use?
You may have seen a fella in the middle of the road waving down cars on foot, flailing out the car window going the wrong direction and pointing to a stop sign? That was yours truly.
Good work, teams, for persevering and figuring out where to start. The PC2 GPS restart did not trigger for all cars as they had to go up a block to bypass the construction. That is until it cleared up minutes later so some cars had a wide open road and were able to follow the NRIs without issue. Go figure. We did not score Leg 3 due to variable mileages and the app potentially not timing all contestants equally from PC2 to PC3.
And this followed multiple road signs going missing between the original course development runs and the course checkout, requiring some adjustments.
I hope competitors enjoyed some of my favorite East County roads and the scenic vistas in many directions. With the (newer, longer) Saturday format we’re able to use roads further out which Cascade probably hasn’t rallied down before – or in decades.
There were a few opportunities to see other rally cars as you looped back to begin a new section. This is something I have enjoyed on rallies and giving a tap on the horn and a friendly wave. I wish I could have joined you at the end location as another reminder that we’re headed towards “normalcy”. For those who did and had pizza – hope it was fun!
The big payoff for this event was following the competitor’s GPS signals as they progressed through the route. I am quite a map nerd and have also been rallying for many years. To be able to see where cars are at and identify when they miss a turn — oh, they’ve figured it out and are turning back — let alone refresh the Scoreboard app to see how standings are in the moment…well, we’ve come a long way, baby! You used to just wait at the pizza place and maybe they’d call you trying to describe the bridge they’re at where the road turned to gravel after they last saw another rally car 45 minutes ago. The Richta timing system allows us to have more checkpoints and generate results just after the last car passes the last passage control. Let alone other numerous advantages for the contestants.
Thanks for attending this CSCC event. There were some excellent leg scores, especially in the afternoon when contestants got more into the groove. Special thanks to Geargrinders Co-Chairs Monte and Victoria Saager for handling so many administrative aspects so we can enjoy the drive.
PS: Bob Morseburg and Cheri Eddy from the Seattle area weren’t the long distance award winners this time, we welcomed Steve Perret and Kathryn Hansen from Bellingham and Friday Harbor, respectively. Alas, the July rally’s furthest from home distinction goes to Car 17 – former Geargrinders Chairs Marinus and Renee Damm from Black Hawk, Colorado! That red E30 BMW’s previous Oregon plate was “2ND OPP”. We also had a Tabor Rally Team face off hearkening back to the late 90’s. Matt Tabor is also a former CSCC Rally Chairman as was Car 18 navigator Ben Bradley. Thank you all for coming.
What one rallier said:
Enjoyed the rally. Some challenging curves. Roads I hadn’t seen before.
Congratulations to the winners:
The three teams with the lowest scores were all running in the Unlimited class, which allows use of external odometers, rally computers and calculators.
First overall was the team of Bob Morseburg and Cheri Eddy with 4 points. They zeroed 11 of the 15 timed legs. That’s just 4 seconds error over a three and half hour event. Amazingly precise. We’ve come to expect nothing less from the SCCA Road Rally Lifetime Points leader.
Second overall was the team of Paul Eklund and Yulia Smolyansky with 15 points, also an impressive performance. With 9 leg scores of zero, they averaged just one second error per leg.
Finishing third overall was the team of Marinus and Renee Damm with 40 points. They zeroed 7 legs and got 1 point on 6 legs. Damm good rallying. (RRR)
In the unequipped category, first in the SOP class was the team of Marcus Gattman and Kerrie Steffenson with 88 points, including 4 zeroes and 7 single-digit leg scores. Marcus and Kerrie are your rallymasters for the August Saturday Series Rally. Don’t miss it!
Second SOP was the team of Matt Tabor and Haley Tabor with 118 points. They had one zero and 7 single-digit leg scores. Nicely done, father and daughter team!
Bill and Kelly Ferber finished third SOP with a score of 139, including a zero and 7 single-digit leg scores. Good finish!
In the Novice class, finishing in first place was the team of Jason Krieg and Luke Glass. Second Novice was Lee Nielsen and Chuck Winkler. Angus and Wendy Proud finished third Novice on their first CSCC road rally. Congratulations!
The top three teams in each class received car wash coupons. Clean rally cars!
Click the image for the complete standings and leg scores of Barn Finds. Thank you to Rallymaster Harer for the wonderful write-up of his adventures and the trials he faced along the way!
