Turkey Tour 2000
Letter from the RallyMasters
Well, we suppose we made this rally too easy. After all, out of 54 cars entered, 42 of you actually came through the checkpoint while we were there. One more car came through, marked down the "Double-Check" sign on their answer sheet, and turned in their sheet at Applebee's. Another 5 cars handed in their answer sheet at Applebee's, so that left only 5 cars that didn't finish- we hope they're not still out there looking for turkeys. And one car never made it to the start- we didn't mean to scare them away at the driver's meeting.
Although we originally told you that there were 39 turkey signs, there actually were only 33. So, in spite of a few complaints about turkeys being hidden, they attracted the attention of some of our rallyists.
We tried to find some roads we hadn't used before- and we think we were successful. And how did you like our "Spain & Spain" direction? One team came up to me and said the instruction was wrong- that Spain was in two places on the building. When I told them that they hadn't gone far enough to find the correct sign, there were a few words back and forth between the driver and navigator!
Our first place finishers (the very experienced team of E. Claridge and R. Kleinman), were only 3 seconds off perfect time- this may be the closest rally finish yet. Many of the times were very good. Take a look at the results and you'll see some very close scores. I guess we didn't fool you too much with the speed changes, and you've obviously caught on to our "follow" instruction. Next time, we'll have to be more devious!
As I mentioned at the drivers meeting, it takes a lot of work to design and put on a rally. Every rally chair team works very hard to plot an interesting route and then must run it several times and have other willing members cold run the rally to get other perspectives and suggestions. Our thanks go to Frank Cardone and Clair Smith who both cold ran the rally with me on separate occasions. Frank also worked the checkpoint with us. Clair suggested using the r mileage at several instructions to prevent teams from missing turns and having to make corrections at potentially dangerous places. We also didn't want you to have to go slowly on the long stretch of higher speed road trying to read signs. I think this worked out very well and gave you something new to work with. I imagine you'll be seeing this technique used in future rallys. Many thanks also go to Jesse Lipscher, who scored the rally on his computer, and had it ready to be put on the website Sunday night.
After having dinner at Applebee's, we had barely gotten to the checkpoint, got the watches out and the checkpoint sign up when we saw a glow over the hill. Moments later, the first car (#4) came charging in to the finish. We had a pretty steady stream of cars after that. This time there was none of the nervous waiting and anticipating when that first car would finish the rally and wondering if it would be a long night at the checkpoint.
It was a lot of fun talking to many of at registration and afterwards at the checkpoint and at Applebee's. We love to hear your war stories. If anyone would like to send us a note, please use our website, www.wscc.org, or you can call us- 914-762-6324. We'd enjoy hearing from you.
HAPPY THANKSGIVING! HAPPY HOLIDAYS! RALLY ON!
Debbi and Gary Kanzler