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Most importantly, thanks to all the workers who showed up. We promised you great spots for viewing, and I hope you agree that we delivered.
Second, thanks to all the competitors who came. I hope you enjoyed our fabulous roads. Most of them held up fantastically, so even the later cars had pretty good roads for the most part. I promised you a mixture of everything, and you got it! It was nice meeting a lot of new people, too.
The cloud cover made it darker a little earlier on Friday, where the night section was the longest, so we had a lot of great night racing that night. On Saturday, it was clear all day and night, so we had a lot of light until the very end. Wasn't the full moonrise over McKenzie Lake awesome on stage 8? Oh, I suppose you were looking at the road. By the way, that road used to skirt the lake even closer. When the lake level rose, it flooded the road, and the DNR just sent in a bulldozer to move it a few feet. That's why it's so gnarly; it just follows the path of least resistance to the bulldozer.
How'd you like SS 1 on Friday? Halverson Lake. We haven't used it in 10 years. It's always been one of my favorites. Impossible to find a rhythm. All the marbles on the surface made it a little tricky this year, but still great fun. We were required to run it before dark so as to not disturb the campers. Turns out all the campers were there to see the rally!
Sorry about the long waits at ATCs, MTCs and RGCs. Those are required by the new rules and there's little we can do about it.
Sorry to the spectators who got delayed by the road closed signs. They should have said, "Road closed except for spectators" or something. Thanks for behaving well at the spectator spots.
I think we represented ourselves well with the community. The homeowners who don't like having us around have little to complain about this year. Those few who misbehaved will be hearing from Mr. Coughnour. I think we proved that we can control our people, so for next year we shouldn't have to run those ridiculously low transit speeds. You know where I mean.
The only complaints I heard about our public behavior were in regards to the press and their driving habits.
As you all know by now, we are careful to keep our route a secret until the last minute. That's partly to keep the competition fair, and partly to keep people from sneaking into the woods where they're not allowed. Despite some pre-event concerns, I think everyone had enough time to make their preparations and get where they were going on time.
It was pretty dusty out there, but we were able to hold off adding dust time until service both nights. Adding a minute to a 55 car field gets the last car home 55 minutes later. If we do it before the last control crew has moved, it adds another 55 minutes to the entire field. So, I'm glad we were able to hold off until service, even though the longer stages were getting bad a little before that.
Our medical crews and procedures handled a difficult situation on Friday, and we're all really proud of the way they handled it. Mr. Adkins was well enough on Saturday to ask his crew if the car would be ready for the next event!
All in all, I'm very pleased with how things turned out. I hope you all come back next year. We'll come up with an entirely new route to keep it fresh, of course (only Stage 1 on Saturday has been used before on the 5 rallies I've rallymastered), but the roads will be as great as ever. We've even got some in reserve that we've never used before, and we will use them if the county can do a little work on them to get them ready for us.
See you next time.
Mark
Ojibwe Rallymaster
Second, thanks to all the competitors who came. I hope you enjoyed our fabulous roads. Most of them held up fantastically, so even the later cars had pretty good roads for the most part. I promised you a mixture of everything, and you got it! It was nice meeting a lot of new people, too.
The cloud cover made it darker a little earlier on Friday, where the night section was the longest, so we had a lot of great night racing that night. On Saturday, it was clear all day and night, so we had a lot of light until the very end. Wasn't the full moonrise over McKenzie Lake awesome on stage 8? Oh, I suppose you were looking at the road. By the way, that road used to skirt the lake even closer. When the lake level rose, it flooded the road, and the DNR just sent in a bulldozer to move it a few feet. That's why it's so gnarly; it just follows the path of least resistance to the bulldozer.
How'd you like SS 1 on Friday? Halverson Lake. We haven't used it in 10 years. It's always been one of my favorites. Impossible to find a rhythm. All the marbles on the surface made it a little tricky this year, but still great fun. We were required to run it before dark so as to not disturb the campers. Turns out all the campers were there to see the rally!
Sorry about the long waits at ATCs, MTCs and RGCs. Those are required by the new rules and there's little we can do about it.
Sorry to the spectators who got delayed by the road closed signs. They should have said, "Road closed except for spectators" or something. Thanks for behaving well at the spectator spots.
I think we represented ourselves well with the community. The homeowners who don't like having us around have little to complain about this year. Those few who misbehaved will be hearing from Mr. Coughnour. I think we proved that we can control our people, so for next year we shouldn't have to run those ridiculously low transit speeds. You know where I mean.
The only complaints I heard about our public behavior were in regards to the press and their driving habits.
As you all know by now, we are careful to keep our route a secret until the last minute. That's partly to keep the competition fair, and partly to keep people from sneaking into the woods where they're not allowed. Despite some pre-event concerns, I think everyone had enough time to make their preparations and get where they were going on time.
It was pretty dusty out there, but we were able to hold off adding dust time until service both nights. Adding a minute to a 55 car field gets the last car home 55 minutes later. If we do it before the last control crew has moved, it adds another 55 minutes to the entire field. So, I'm glad we were able to hold off until service, even though the longer stages were getting bad a little before that.
Our medical crews and procedures handled a difficult situation on Friday, and we're all really proud of the way they handled it. Mr. Adkins was well enough on Saturday to ask his crew if the car would be ready for the next event!
All in all, I'm very pleased with how things turned out. I hope you all come back next year. We'll come up with an entirely new route to keep it fresh, of course (only Stage 1 on Saturday has been used before on the 5 rallies I've rallymastered), but the roads will be as great as ever. We've even got some in reserve that we've never used before, and we will use them if the county can do a little work on them to get them ready for us.
See you next time.
Mark
Ojibwe Rallymaster
