Sixteen teams entered the Cascade Sports Car Club’s fifth event in the 2024 Saturday Rally Series on July20. The rally traveled from Dealers Supply in northwest Portland, up 1-5 North to Ridgefield, into the hinterlands of Clark County, pausing for a break at the Fargher Lake Store, and ending at the Prairie Tavern in Brush Prairie, Washington. The route was just over 90 miles and took a bit over three hours to complete.
What the Rallymasters said —
The July rally, Rally by the Numbers, is a reflection of classic time-speed-distance trick-and-trap road rally. In addition to traditional sign hunts and Main Road traps, the July rally included some brain tickling math and logic puzzles. Yep, our kind of fun.
The route followed roads familiar to long-time local rallyists. We’ve written many events in this fertile rallyland. This time we ran much of the usual route backwards, just for a different perspective.
A local attraction that appears along the rally route shortly after the end of the odometer calibration section is a display of amazing yardart. Metal statues, carvings of animals and people, historic buildings, and a stream with waterfalls decorate this long roadside frontage. Search “Farm carvings Ridgefield Washington” to see this overlooked display. We take our rally route by it whenever we’re in that area.
Challenges —
Despite the rally puzzle fun, the July rally was an easy rally. A couple of sign-hunt notes and a pretty good main road trap kept things interesting.
Early in the rally, an ITIS (if there is such) instruction offered a speed change at a sign reading Pinegrove Tables. There is such a sign, sort of. It actually reads “Pinegrove Stables,” but the “S” is very stylized and might be discounted as decorative. So, the correct action was to skip this ITIS instruction, as you never encountered the referenced sign. Teams that used the ITIS and decreased their CAST from 40 to 35 were late on Leg 6.
The first of the two sign-hunt notes, Note Horses, directed you to CSD (change speed down) 3 at each equestrian sign. This note was introduced but never canceled, so it remained active until the end of the rally. The second note, Note View, directed you to CSU (change speed up) 3 at each sign reading View. The two notes overlapped for a good part of the rally, so you were looking for both signs at the same time. The Note Horses was used four times: twice on Leg 9, once on Leg 10, and once on Leg 18. Note View was used three times: twice on Leg 10 and once on Leg 11.
The Main Road trap was set up by these two route instructions:
R first OPP.
R on 135TH ITIS.
Some rallyists were tempted to execute the R first OPP at the pictured intersection. However, there’s a back-facing stop sign on the road straight ahead, while there is no back-facing stop sign on the road coming from the right. So the Main Road at this intersection goes right. Meaning you cannot execute an instruction here directing you to go right.
The correct action was to follow the main road to the right and continue looking for an opportunity to executive the R first OPP. And yes, there is an opportunity just about a block down the road to go right on 124th. So 124th was where you should have executed the R first OPP. Having done so, you never encounter an opportunity to execute the ITIS instruction, so you skip it. If you decided to use the R first OPP at this pictured intersection, you continued down the road to 135th, where you used the R on 135th ITIS.
This route instruction presented the first of two math logic puzzles: CAST 25 for half the distance to the next NRI, then CAST 35. The challenge is that you don’t know the distance to the next route instruction. It seems like you could just split the difference and average 30 mph, but that’s not quite right. It takes longer to drive a distance at 25 mph than it does to drive that same distance at 35 mph.
One clever team at a previous rally where this puzzle was presented approached the problem by driving a tenth of a mile at 25, then a tenth of a mile at 35, then another tenth at 25, etc. until the next route instruction was reached. That approach might come close, but a more accurate strategy is to calculate an average speed to maintain over the entire distance.
Here’s the formula we think works: Calculate the factor (minutes per mile= 60/speed) for each speed, add the factors together and divide by 2, then divide 60 by the calculated average factor to determine the appropriate average speed. Using this approach, the perfect average speed for the entire distance is 29.167mph. If you just drove the entire distance at 30 mph, you’d be early. TSD road rally is all about precision.
The second and final math logic puzzle was presented at the intersection pictured above. The route looped around and returned here after the break. The route instruction read:
S AFTER “YIELD”. Decrease CAST by 100% for 30 seconds, then increase CAST by 100% for 30 seconds, then CAST 36.
We previously established that the Main Road goes right at this intersection by Protection (only one route leaving the intersection without a back-facing stop or yield sign). So yes, the instruction S (straight) can be executed at this intersection. But then what do you do with the rest of the instruction?
We arrived at this instruction, traveling at a CAST of 42 mph. We can all agree that 100% of 42 is 42, right? So decreasing 42 by 100% equals zero. So you pause for 30 seconds. Then, increasing zero by 100% is still zero, so you pause another 30 seconds. And finally you change your average speed to 36 and carry on.
The instruction, as we originally wrote it said to go straight through the intersection and then pause a minute to enjoy the view of Mt. St.Helens. But this was a much more interesting way to say that, don’t you think so?
Congratulations to the Top Finishers —
First Overall and First in the Equipped Class is the team of Bob Morseburg and Cheri Eddy in Car #25 with a total of 48 points over 16 scored legs. They zeroed five legs, and nine of their leg scores were single-digit. Impressive!
Second Overall and First in the Novice Class is the team of Bill and Felix Kayser in Car #11, with a score of 90. They ran one perfect zero leg and got single-digit scores on twelve legs. Wow! What a great performance from this Novice team!
Third Overall and First in the SOP Class is the team of Russ and Kate Sherrell in Car# 2, with a score of 105. They zeroed one leg and got single-digit scores on eleven legs. Very nicely done!
Second SOP is the team of David and JoAnn Gattman in Car# 1 with a score of 160. They were doing so well until they fell for a math problem and maxed Leg 15. Can’t win ’em all.
Second in the Novice Class is the team of Sean Pitman and Grant Heizenrader in Car# 15, with a total score of 173. They turned in a good performance, with one zero and eight single-digit scores.
Third in SOP is the team of Torm Kelsey-Green and Kasey Klaus in Car# 13, which scored 185. They zeroed one leg and had five single-digit scores.
Finishing Third in the Novice Class is the team of Mike and Cheryl Knight in Car# 12.
The top three teams in each class received car wash coupons, coffee cards, and candy bars. The taste of victory is always sweet. Congratulations to all!
