The Road Rally Season has come to an end. The November 3rd rally, “It’s About Time!”, hosted 7 teams for a drive on a glorious, Fall day – sunshine and beautiful leaves – on hilly, winding roads in the Middletown area. This was a new format for us, focusing on driving the prescribed route at a consistent elapsed time over multiple passes, while not knowing precisely where the timing checkpoints were. I was amazed at how close the times were. Our winners, newcomers Julio Chang & Selena Cruces, completed the run with only 9 seconds difference between two of the runs. Gordon & Teresa Benson just missed top honors with a 10 second difference.
The “Perseverance” award goes to the novice team of Nickolas Ridgeway & Xavier Howard, newbies who apparently partied all night, drove down from Ft. Wayne this morning, took a power nap before release time and completed the route all three times. I saw them shoot pass their turn at my timing checkpoint on one run and go the wrong direction 3 times before coming back and getting back on track, 32 minutes after they went off course. That’s dedication! Kudos to them.
Many thanks to Rally Master, Jim Knepper, who once again found us some awesome roads, put together a fun route, and manned the other timing checkpoint. I’m looking forward to another great year in 2019. Every rally teaches us something new in how to run a successful program. We’ve made new friends who return to play with us. Come join us next year!
Christy Graham
Road Rally Chair
