Saturday dawned bright and blue - a first for this rally season.  Rallymaster Brandon Harer put together a beautiful course that took advantage of the lush countryside of Clackamas County.  With a few light traps sprinkled among the Christmas trees, ralliers criss-crossed the area in an effort to avoid the traps and secure those elusive zeroes.  

Congratulations to the team of Simon Levear and Ben Bradley in car #2 for successfully zeroing two of the five legs!  Was it any coincidence that the checkpoints were now using automated checkpoint lines to trigger the rally clocks?  Only time will tell.  (Yes, that's a pun).

Near the mid-point of the rally, contestants were treated to a trip to the Eagle Creek Fish Hatchery, home of the electric fish!  After this shocking development, teams rallied forth while being confronted with a pair of ONTO traps and a spelling trap, until finally coming upon this in leg 5:

    55.  CAST 33 at "FISH HATCHERY" then TURN LEFT at JUBB.

    56.  L on STORMER ITIS.

    57.  R on MATTOON CAST 38.

A quick check of the rally rules shows us that both TURN and LEFT are deviations, so route instruction 55 has three actions: (1) change speed at a sign, (2) TURN (at first opportunity) and (3) LEFT at JUBB. Some rally teams might have been fooled and completed both deviations at the same place since the TURN happened to be a left at Jubb. Or perhaps the navigator didn't clearly communicate multiple actions.  Regardless, while on course teams were executing both parts as separate turns, off course teams used instruction 56.  Finally all teams got back together using instruction 57 - R on MATTOON - with off course being none the wiser.  Such is the crafting of a good rally trap.

After the final checkpoint, rally teams had a short transit to the finish location at the Carver Hangar in Damascus where food was great and the company even better.

At the top of the leaderboard in Unlimited class was Simon and Ben - those two zereoes made all the difference.  Taking the top spot in the SOP class was Sean and Tonia Anderson who were ticking off some good scores until they got caught by the TURN LEFT trap.  Pablo and Yulia took home the Masters class win.

The sun shone.  It rained.  It hailed.  Then it rained and hailed harder.  And on occasion the sun shone again. We should have expected weather like this...on the day of the Rose Festival parade.  

Along with the weather, the ralliers battled the course from Troutdale to Sandy. A tour along the Historic Columbia River Highway included a break for treats and sodas at Guy W. Talbot State Park in beautiful downtown Latourel.  There were scenic views, waterfalls, twisty roads, Crown Point and lots of fun driving.

Rally traps were plentiful -- this was a SaagerPalooza after all. Here's an example of a simple but deceptive trap:

        NOTE C: CAST 30 at "SHIPLEY". Cancel NOTE C. Cancel NOTE A.

The trick is that when you execute the CAST at Shipley, NOTE A is not canceled. Why? Well, canceling NOTE C cancels all of the NOTE including the part that would have canceled NOTE A. And since there was a 15 point pause attached to NOTE A, some teams missed a pause. It's all about the time.

Taking top honors were Cascade members Kevin Poirier and Chris Hale. A special wave of the flag to car number 2, Larry Anson and Fran Hanchek, for having the best score on Leg 4 which hosted the "toughest trap" of the day. The leg involved four possible routes -- all ended in the same place, but only one was correct. Well done, gents!

Honorable mention to novice teams -- Marty Lawrence and Aspen Padilla and Cascade president Vince Vavrosky with his daughter Clarissa -- who chose the hardest rally of the season to give it a try. They did their best to follow the route and arrived at the most important location -- the restaurant at the end! Congratulations on your first rally. Keep it up; it only gets easier and more fun.

A special thanks to our workers: Larry LeFebvre, Randy and Gloria Hale, John and Robby Elkin, and Kasey and Robert Klaus.  There's no rally without you.