Rally School! (and some other crap…)
This weekend, Kris and I took a trip up to Ridgecrest to attend a rally school. Our adventure began at 3pm, I time I thought would be late enough for Kris and I not to miss a whole day of work, but early enough to beat the Friday Vegas rush. I was WAY wrong. We sat on the 91 for what seemed like the entire night (turns out it was - and I use this term loosely - only four hours). Apparently there was extra traffic due to recent rains and mudslides causing side roads to be closed. Just our luck. When we had both had enough of sitting in the car going nowhere fast, we stopped off the highway. We decided to grab some dinner at the local McD’s.
*tangent story - skip if you want to read about the actually rally school… I was sitting by myself, sipping on a shamrock shake, when I hear someone call my name. I’m thinking ‘who the heck could know my name here?’ as I turn around. Well, it was a friend of my ex’s - a girl I’d liked a lot and thought had moved out to Cali herself. In a weird way it was nice to see her. I introduced her to Kris, found out that she is now married (to the same guy she’d been with when I met her in the long-ago), and also found out that my ex (who I’d last heard was engaged to a girl 5 years younger than him, and also found out that was now over) was coming out to visit her this coming week. So weird to think of him as being in the same state as me right now. We exchanged some pleasentries, and both resumed our long trip on the highway towards Vegas.
Back to the rally school!!! We arrived late and exhausted to our hotel, after finally being able to get off the highway to hell that is the I-15 (enroute to Vegas Friday night!). I still wasn’t feeling well, but at least I’d finally been able to get some REAL help at the UCI same-day clinic earlier in the week. I wasn’t looking forward to getting up early, and another day of school - on the weekend.
This rally school was 100% worth it! It was affordable. It had relevant material for both drivers and codrivers (there aren’t many schools out there for us navies!) and divided us up in distinct sessions in the afternoon for practice. Kris and I both learned how rally works, from a timing, signage, and inquiry perspective - sides you aren’t exposed to when you just go spectate a rally. They had a little “walk-through” rally in the morning so we could practice what it was like to see the signs in use, and go through the various timing controls. I thought that that was really cool.
In the afternoon Kris left with the other drivers to go get some tips from an “expert” while I stayed in the classroom for a few more informational sessions with experienced co-drivers. I met John Dillon, who was very cool and answered all m questions - about where to put things, what information you get, what kind of shoes to wear. He also had some great tips for getting extra enjoyment out of a rally - for example, having something to give to workers at timing controls as a small “thank you.” I also got to go practice actual co-driving with Paula Gibeault. I told her about how Kris and I use the PS2 games to build our “rally relationship,” and that we’d done a couple TSDs togther as well. She said that she thought those were both great ideas. Perhaps it’s something they might add as a suggestion to future sessions of the school? The in-car experience was awesome, but I did not like the rally computer at all. After experiencing the TerrorTrip(tm) for myself, I told Kris that I was not going to let him install that piece of crap, and established concretely that we would instead be getting a Brantz when the time arose.
The next day we notated the rallycross as practice. Kris came in 2nd! We also spent some time figuring out which events we would plan to spectate, possibly work at, and most importantly compete at. We signed up for CRS membership, and decided to test the car and our rally relationship at several rallycrosses this season. We are also definately going to spectate Rim of the World and possibly work at the Treeline Rally. Due to reasons of school (I need to pass my preliminary qualifying exam), we are not going down to Mexico for the Ensenada Road Race. I still wish we could head down to Mexico for the WRC in a couple weekends, but at least we got to go last year. 
It was an awesome weekend. Now if I could just figure out how to make rally a career and give up this science stuff… 
Some of Francis Crick’s doodles of DNA were released this week - Kris pointed me to the article on Slashdot the other day. This reminded me that I should probably mention how we went to a certain talk last week.
