Slipstream - July 2011

Red River Rally
By Jerry Sutton
Gosh, I haven’t written a Slipstream article in over
two decades. At least I don’t remember writing
any during that time. So maybe it’s my turn again.
Here goes...
When I saw the announcement for the Red River Derby
Tour and Gimmick Rally I marked it for follow-up. Myra
noticed the announcement in her own email and told me
she wanted to participate in the tour. So I sent our Tour
Meister an email. I was in
trouble when Myra said
we should do the rally
instead of the tour in order
to practice for Parade.
We intended to get
an early start towards
McKinney on May 14th,
but our intentions to start
early failed, ... something
to do with aging I guess.
We got to the Westgate
Shopping Center parking
lot in time. We were
delighted to see a sea of
Porsches; we had 46 cars
total for the tour and rally.
At the end of the day twenty cars were scored in the rally.
I understand twenty cars started the rally ... Yay, we didn’t
lose a one!
Carey had prepared a gimmick rally with a small taste of a
TSD (Time-Speed-Distance) rally thrown in. Other than an
overall minimum/maximum time limit, time and speed were
not a part of scoring and deviation from the ideal distance was
used only as a tiebreaker. The instructions Carey provided
were written in the style of a full-scale TSD event: General
instructions with a supplemental glossary for “ONTO”
and “LINED ROAD”, route following priorities, valid and
invalid rally road definitions, and so forth; numbered route
instructions utilizing the PCR (Parade Competition Rules)
Rally Glossary (which was included in our event packet)
along with the supplemental glossary terms.
We were following route instructions without any specified
speed, elapsed time, or elapsed distance (which would be
specified for a TSD type event). Carey provided instructions
designed to not trick us into being off course, when most
rally instructors would do the opposite. The spirit of
PCR’s requires rally masters to “loop” such “traps” so that
inexperienced rallyists are automatically brought back
onto the course, but their score will be penalized in that
their arrival time at the next checkpoint will be off. Carey
followed this guideline as several people went off course.
16
The objective of the rally was to find signs with partial quotes
on the answer sheet and fill in the missing words. There were
fifteen such signs that we encountered in the order listed
along the route. In addition we were to look for cemeteries
(or signs indicating cemeteries) from the end of the odometer
check leg to the end of the numbered route instructions;
there turned out to be six of these. In the end it was one
of these that caused us to take third place instead of first -
Carey tells me
the sign was
edge on at a T
intersection.
After arriving
at the tour/rally
destination
“Rancho
Sereno” in
Whitesboro
we turned in
our answer
sheets to Carey.
After dinner
we learned
the following
trophy results:
Place - Driver/Navigator - #Correct - Mileage Error
First: - George Luxbacher/Ethan Strong - 21 - 0.29
Second: - Gary White/Vanessa White - 21 - 1.20
Third: - Myra Sutton/Jerry Sutton - 20 - 0.09
Oh, hey, that’s us. Too bad we were not off another .02
mile. If we had been, Mike and Emily De Jong would have
taken third and I would not have to find room for yet another
pair of PCA trophies.
A special thanks to our hosts, former Maverick Region
members and Rancho Sereno owners, Mike & Lisa Maberry,
for welcoming an abundance of Maverick folks with a great
barbecue dinner. A very deserving hand especially goes out
to John & B J (Tour Meisters) Harvey, Carey Spreen (Rally
Meister), along with their helpers; Brendan Eagan, Mahdu
Rao, Dee Luxbacher, Linda Bambina and Jasmine Shoffit
for putting together a fun filled day and a good excuse to
drive our Porsches and be with friends.
Hopefully, none of you will read this all the way through,
especially not potential employers. In keeping with my
desire to maintain a very low social media profile, any future
articles I write will require use of a pseudonym.
and the winner is...