2012 Turkey Tour Rally
The Results
The Turkey Tour has been run continuously for the last 63 years, I have written about 6 or 7 of them with Barbara. This year, Ken wanted to get the rallymaster experience, not sure if he regrets it, but it seemed like we had fun. The biggest question in the process was that we had a route planned and run, instructions written, and then Hurricane Sandy blew through. The weekend after Sandy, was pointless to even try with trees and power lines everywhere, besides there was a mini-gas crisis. The following weekend would leave us 1 week before the rally. Postponing was discussed, but we ran the rally the Saturday night one week prior to the event date to ensure the route was still feasible. There was lots of trees down, power lines down, but the route was clear, we would move ahead with the scheduled date.
The rally date came and we split the sign posting effort between two groups, usually one group does the whole route, which takes quite a while. With two groups it was very quick and easy. This was the first time in a while that we had a mid-rally checkpoint, its nice having a lot of help.
Speaking of help, Frank, as always is the under appreciated constant in the WSCC rally program, always ready to help in anyway possible. This year he was part of sign posting team B. He also manned the 1st checkpoint with Ken. Debbi and Gary did registration which is always a big help. Mike had his novice meeting before the rally, we had a few new names in the finishers list, so that must have helped. Barbara pre-ran the rally the weekend before the event, a nervous day in the wake of Sandy. Ken ran the route, wrote instructions, posted signs and helped in every way possible to make this event a big success.
And a success it seemed to be, 32 cars registered, 23 finished at the checkpoint and 2 made it to the first checkpoint but missed the second. There was one tricky instruction, “Left at Traffic Light” where the road hits an entrance ramp to a parkway and the right turn was a dead end, it was a forced left and the traffic light was about a mile down the road. Not sure if that is where people got lost, the finishers didn't complain about that. The one that a lot of teams had issue with was “Right after “Salt””, the “Salt” sign was immediately after the turn onto that road. There was a turkey sign about 10 feet after the “Salt” sign, that must have drawn people away from the instructions and the sign they just passed that said “Reduced Salt Area”. Sorry.
We posted 32 turkey signs, the top teams did well with those. Mileage guesses where interesting, one team was within 0.01 miles of the actual distance, still not sure how or why they were guessing in hundredths.
If you are doing well on rallies or think you might be, it would be worth joining the club, members compete not only in each event, but also for their name engraved on a traveling silver cup that is our year end rally trophy. It is awarded at our dinner every year. Each event carries points for the year end trophy, 20, 15, 12.... points are awarded overall and within club members, so a first place carries 40 points and second without a member in first is 20+15, 35. It ties the multiple rallies together and creates a nice friendly rivalry among the teams competing for the trophy. There have been less members from the rally program over the years, this event had only 8 members so the trophy is ripe for some new names on it.
Hope you all had a good time, we will see you for the Bunny Run around Easter 2013.
Jesse, Ken, and Barbara.