That's The Way

The weather forecast threatened snow a couple of days before the rally checkout, but it never arrived. By rally day, skies were blue and the sun was shining reflecting brightly off Mt. Hood. It was a beautiful day for rally.

Twenty-one teams entered the March 21 Saturday Series Rally, including some names familiar from the annals of rally, local and afar, folks who’ve been Cascade rallymasters in the past, even some who’ve been Geargrinders Chairs!

Rallymasters Dave and JoAnn Gattman’s March rally titled That’s the Way offered just the right balance of scenery, fun-to-drive roads, and rally challenge. But more about that later. (Every rallymaster says the same thing: “It’s an easy rally.”) 

About the rally 

The rally was just under 100 miles from the start at Milwaukie Lowe’s to the ending location at Stark Street Pizza in Portland. It took about three and a half hours to complete the event. The odo ended in Damascus, followed by some tricky pieces that may have involved a trip through a virtual off course route control, culminating at a quick break in Boring. Slam bang, and they’re off!

Next the route meandered through the Eagle Creek area, criss-crossing and rerunning roads in reverse, where rally teams more than once had the opportunity to see other rally teams (and wonder who was off course – the team going in the opposite direction or themselves). Eventually the route led to the next break in Estacada.

It was all downhill from there, another ten legs to the final transit to pizza. Whew!

Challenges 

Note Speed was active throughout the scored portion of the event. Each time you encountered a speed limit sign, you were to change your average speed to 2 mph less than the posted speed limit. Note Speed was used 13 times, not counting the signs you went by already at the required speed. (Made you look though.) Missing one of these speed changes made you early or late on one or more legs.

Note Zoso said TURN CAST 23, R CAST 38. It was introduced at a sign reading Hacienda. What you were supposed to do is turn at the next intersection after you see the Hacienda sign and change your speed to 23 at that intersection. Then go right at the next intersection after that, changing your speed to 38. Easy peasy, right?

A glance at the Leg 5 and Leg 6 scores shows that confusion seemed to reign for some. Also on Leg 5 was an OR instruction: R AFTER “25 MPH” CAST 40 OR R on BOHNA PARK. The rules say to execute half of the instruction on one side of the OR depending on the reference that is observed first. Everybody goes right on Bohna Park, but those who noticed the 25 mph sign prior to the intersection correctly used the first half of the OR, including the speed change. If you executed the second half, you were late on Leg 5.

There was a similar OR instruction on Leg 24:

R AFTER “DAWN MARIE” CAST 40 OR R at JUDD.

Again, everyone goes right on Judd, but those who noticed the Dawn Marie sign prior to the right correctly used the first half of the OR instruction, including the speed change.

There were eight route instructions containing the term ITIS, if there is such. An ITIS instruction is the only kind of instruction you can skip, but only if it cannot be executed prior to the next route instruction.

In this rally, we informed contestants that all of the ITIS instructions followed the intended rally route, but some were not executable, so you had to decide whether to use them or not. Each ITIS also included a 15 second pause. If you executed all eight ITIS instructions correctly, you saved yourself 120 penalty points!

Four of the ITIS instructions included official mileage. The rules say that instructions accompanied by official mileage must be executed at that mileage, and the rules also say that deviations contained in ITIS instructions may be executed to follow the main road if official mileage accompanies the instruction. So these four ITIS instructions were correctly executed, including their 15 second pauses.

Three ITIS instructions were deviations that followed the main road, and official mileage did not accompany the instructions. These three ITIS instructions could not be executed and were correctly skipped. 

There was one ITIS instruction that was not accompanied by mileage, yet it was executed including the 15 second pause. That instruction directed a pause and a speed change, with no deviation. No reason not to do it.

An ONTO proved to be challenging for some. Shortly after executing the instruction L ONTO DOWTY, the named road goes right as a sideroad. Folks who continued past the sideroad signed Dowty, staying on the straight not-named Dowty, found themselves back at the highway, confused about why the route instructions weren’t working.

Because you missed the ONTO! Stay focused! (Leg 12 scores reveal who you are.)

Then, under the heading of “we thought we made the rally easier by removing a trap,” we have the 257th triangle. The rallymaster originally included a trap involving travel around a small triangle. To protect the trap, GPS route controls were placed just beyond the two intersections where you could drive past an intended turn.

However, when the Geargrinders Chair drove the course, the off course route control posted on their Richta app even though they did not drive either of the two off course routes. After some research, it was determined that the official route parallels the earlier off course route and is just close enough to be within the Richta app’s range.

The instruction replacing the trap, although clear as crystal (IMHO), apparently was open to interpretation. We had no idea there were so many ways for rally teams to execute this instruction.

Thank the workers

Although some rally teams found this event to be challenging, there were no complaints or protests, just thank you’s for all the work and time put in by those who make these events possible.

Thank you to our March rallymasters, David and JoAnn Gattman. It takes a lot of time and effort to put together an event like this. Also thank you to Don and Vicki Atwood who ran the rally checkout a week before the rally. Please join us in thanking them for their contribution to Cascade’s rally program. 

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