For a third year my friend Marguerite agreed to help me organize the Halloween Rally. We planned a route that ran through Tarrytown and past our old autocross site at G.M. Inadvertently we also routed past Frank Cardone's job and my old house in Katonah. Again we gave a giant helper: if you traveled 4 miles and could not complete an instruction or see one of our signs, you were off-course. To that end, we did not place any off-course signs. We did, however, strategically place the on-course signs to distract you from road signs you were searching for. Looking back, this may have been a little too effective.
Dressed as Raggedy Ann and Andy, traveling in a yellow-and-green-polka dot lizard we handed out costume trophies at the start to hippies, bug people, a giant spider and an off-road runner. Average speed was voted on anonymously; you chose 27 miles per hour. We gave trick or treat bags with toys and candy (and bugs, a popular theme that night.) After all cars were off we went to Applebee's to change, hang the course map, the "cheater" instructions and the course distance, mileage and number of signs. Then we waited at the checkpoint. And waited. And waited. We gossiped under a brilliant starlit but frigid sky until cars finally started trickling in, mostly new teams, and none of the more experienced teams we expected to see first. After facing your disappointed looks and angry words we realize that, even after years of successful rallying, there still exists many ways to interpret the general instructions. Our reasoning (which was not meant to trick you, honest) was that if a right is a turn of approximately 90 degrees, then 3rd right should be the third turn of approximately 90 degrees. Alot of novice teams picked up on this in the beginning and followed our consistency. Unfortunately, most of you did not, and for that we are truly sorry.
Those who did finish had an enjoyable trip past farmhouses, mansions, reservoirs, even a personal castle with its own moat. It was a particularly rough ride for the navigators, a few of them had their heads pinned to the window on the sharply winding roads. The shaky handwriting as much as the signs tells us you followed our varied course. Another dedicated group was able to finish the course (and do very well on signs) but ran too late to meet us at the checkpoint. Congratulations to those who were able to finish (results were not available at this writing.) Thanks to Debbi and Gary who handled registration, Clair Smith who did a cold run, my friend Marguerite who always goes above and beyond and to Frank Cardone who did numerous cold runs, helped us put out signs and worked the checkpoint. This rally design team is hanging up our maps for a while to give some new people a chance to experience the other side of rallies. See you at the Turkey Tour.
Valerie Christou