Ramada Express weekend
A while back Kris looked for stage rallies in our area of the country, and found this rally based out of Laughlin, NV. I was definately up for getting out of the house after classes and finals were over. Unfortunately I’m not quite done with one final paper I have to write before I leave, but I have two days to finish it up before we fly east. In any case, the rally was…mediocre. This is not to say I didn’t have a good time. I enjoyed what little of it we could actually spectate. Kris has already gone into some of the details of why this happened, but I’m going to sum it up with my own story.
We headed out Friday night, hit a bit of Friday night rush hour and Vegas weekend traffic. Since I-40 splits off the 15, we had smooth sailing after the split. When we got to the hotel, we looked around and asked for info about the rally. The local paper said spectating would be difficult, but there would be more information in the expo tent during most of the weekend. So we headed out to the tent. I was disappointed when we walked in and saw three guys - all playing Richard Burns Rally. Since there wasn’t anyone else around, we helped ourselves. We found a brochure, which we quickly flipped through. Satisfied by the info given about spectating areas and times for stage runs, we left. At this point we were pleased that there was a bound color brochure with all the info - almost as good as the booklets that were practically airdropped in Mexico. Unfortunately, once we were back in our room we realized the booklets were from LAST YEAR’S RALLY!!! “Maybe the info’s the same as last year,” I said. “We’ll double check tomorrow.”
Kris left the room the next morning and when he came back he threw the brochure across the room. “Don’t need THIS anymore,” he said. Awesome - they for some reason had info from last year’s rally but nothing about 2004’s rally. Some of the stages were the same, some of the spectator spots were the same, but the times for the stages weren’t the same, and some of them were just totally canceled. To add insult to this injury of non-information, the actual stages of the rally were some 80 miles away in Arizona, not a hop, skip, and a jump away from Laughlin, Nv. At least we did get some information, and were able to spectate one stage.
Our experience on spectating the stage was not so great. Kris took some pictures from the stage end - and we had a pretty good view of cars coming sideways around a corner into the finish. But when we went to the actual “spectator area,” we were yelled at like we were little kids. “CAR!” they would scream - as if neither one of us could hear it roaring down the road. Then they yelled at us not to “leave the area,” (in my opinion that was, “Don’t leave our sight, kids!”) like mom. We could have stayed in the area to spectate a second run of the stage, but decided not to.
I knew there was a rallycross going on near our hotel, so we decided to check that out instead. Apparently everyone that WOULD have been spectating was sucked into the rallycross, which wasn’t even a real rallycross on Saturday, but a practice for Sunday. Disappointing too. So we went back to our room, watched tv, had dinner, went to bed.
At least we had Sunday to look forward to, right? The whole reason we went out there? To see the Super Special Stage with rallycars running side by side? So we got up early to grab some Starbucks, and headed on back to where the rallycross had been practicing the previous day. Ok, so the SSS was good. We saw Wagonmonster, and Kris was able to take plenty of pics. There was actually a crowd in the stands - even if it was mostly the supporters and event workers - oh, and the kids from the rallycross.
My favorite part - a woman asked me where I’d been working the previous day. I said bitterly. “I wasn’t. I came here to spectate.” She replies, “Oh, I knew you looked familiar. Did you have a good time?” “Not really,” I said coldly, but honestly. What I wanted to say was, “Oh, you should recognize me - SINCE YOU YELLED AT ME TO NOT LEAVE YOUR SPECTATOR AREA YESTERDAY!” But of course I didn’t.
Bitter….check
Disappointed…check
Left early - at least we beat the weekend traffic from Las Vegas back into the OC.
So did the rally totally suck? Yes and no. The SSS was pretty cool. And I realize it’s hard to control spectators. But the lack of information was phenomenol. Even in Maine there was information in the local paper about where you could go to spectate, with a map - even if it was a sketch-type map.
Why doesn’t the organization realize that if you don’t give out any information, you run the risk of MORE spectator accidents than you do with even a little info. We had people admit to us that they went and checked out the stage roads. What is the point of having no spectator areas, if you are going to cause more bystander accidents, and possibly have to close stage roads? I also know that insurance coverage and spectators don’t always mix, but if they can do it in MEXICO, why can’t we get our heads together and make it happen in the US? I don’t get it.
