El Camino Real XXX The Boucher/Schneider Zone 8 T/S/D Rally STORY & EVENT PHOTOS BY DICK LANGE & DOREEN PANKOW It was a picture perfect day for the 30th running of El Camino Real, Santa Barbara Region’s Zone 8 rally, on Saturday, May 13th. Dave and Susan Stone greeted and registered the 20 rallyists and gave them the coveted route instructions along with PCA Rally rules and a few delay forms in case they ran into time delays. The drivers and navigators hastily retreated to their cars to study the route and try to discern all the tricky nuances before the start of the rally. Those who attended the Rally School in April were hoping their extra preparation would pay off. Revere Jones and Tom Gould, PCA Zone 8’s Rally Co-Chairs, wrote the rally route for our event. They called the group together for a route briefing meeting about twenty minutes before our departure. The checkpoint workers left early to “man” the various checkpoints which the rallyists are expected to find throughout their route. These checkpoints are easy to miss if you aren’t paying attention, and the penalty in points is steep. The checkpoint workers don’t exactly wear bright orange clothes, and they often park their cars where they’re not easily seen. Ten cars left the Sears parking lot in Santa Barbara, one minute apart, with high hopes of achieving perfection, which means you don’t get lost or take any wrong turns, you find all the checkpoints, not knowing how many there will be, and you arrive within hundredths of minutes accuracy at each checkpoint at the “true time.” The rallyist’s job is to stay on time and on course, by following the cryptic clues in the route instructions. Of course this means you have to estimate how long you sat at the stop sign or stoplight, how long you spent getting up to that average speed and then estimate how much faster you have to drive for the next few seconds or minutes to make up lost time. The driver is usually trying to figure out all these “seat of the pants” estimates while the navigator is reading and calling out the next course of action designated on the rally route, looking for road signs and trying not to get carsick while reading and calculating along windy canyon roads. What could be more fun? So where did we go? The odometer calibration portion of the course took us on San Marcos Pass Road/CA-154, and then we headed up and over a very windy E. Camino Cielo Rd. for almost 18 miles and enjoyed incredible views of the California Condor Preserve and the coastline. Of course, the navigators were all getting carsick as they were trying to read the route instructions on this windy road. We then traveled through Santa Barbara on Foothill Rd. (the CA-192) and a variety of other roads until we finally came out onto the 101 South for a few miles. We enjoyed a side tour exiting onto CA-1 at Seacliff for about six miles along the coastline and then back onto the 101 south to the CA-126 East. We got off at Victoria and toured many side roads along Foothill Rd. including Wheeler Canyon Rd. Then we headed east on Foothill Rd. towards Santa Paula. Near the end of the rally, we traversed Acacia on the south side of the CA-126 to find our last checkpoint. Five novice cars (drivers and navigators) and five more experienced cars ran the same course. We covered about 80 miles of predominantly back roads over a period of three and a half hours, and ended at the Familia Diaz Restaurant in Santa Paula for a late lunch and the presentation of the awards. (Results listed below) I want to thank all our excellent checkpoint workers: Burt and Marge Misevic, Jim Paden, Jared Leadbetter, Joe Boucher and Tom Brown, PCA Zone 8’s Representative. I’d also like to thank Dave & Susan Stone for handling the day-of-event registration. And a BIG “thank you” to Revere Jones and Tom Gould for creating the great rally route and <strong>org</strong>anizing all the checkpoint activities. Schneider Autohaus was our event sponsor, and everyone wants to thank them for their support and for purchasing all of the award plaques. = Rally school courtesy of Schneider Autohaus. Tom Gould and Revere Jones - PCA Zone 8 Rally Co-Chairs and Rally Masters.
EL CAMINO REAL XXX RALLY RESULTS Joe Boucher (left) and Joe Schneider (right) - Previous SBR Rally Masters
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