Jaguar Rally Weekend !!

What a wonderful weekend this was. I got to spend both days of the weekend not only in a Jaguar but also competing in one of my favorite activities, Road Rally.

So yes you are all asking what the heck a Road Rally is and assume its one of those crazy car things that I do. Well I guess in some ways you are correct, but I tell you its a whole heck of lot of fun.

Simple Description: A road rally is an automotive event in which two people, driver and navigator, attempt to follow an unknown route and arrive at timing controls exactly on time (Unless a Monte Carlo Rally these are at unknown locations).

There are a lot of different types of road rallies. This weekends set of events were both Tulip Rallies. Tulip rallies have drawings to depict the direction which you are suppose to go while non-Tulip Rallies are worded directions (Ex/ Turn Right at the T). All speeds are below speed limit, and the rallies occur on back country roads with very little traffic for the most part. Usually, all rallies end up somewhere for dinner or lunch and last 2-4 hrs depending on the setup plus eating time.

How did I do?
First of all, I was lucky to find a gentleman in the Jaguar club who attended the events without a Navigator. Since I was unable to find a driver, it would have been a bit difficult to actually compete in the events without this luck. So Thanks to DM who was my driver for the weekend.

The first day was a bit rough. Driver missed one turn during the ODO run which luckily doesnt cost us anything but some prep time. Combo mess up during the first leg of the race took us about a half mile out of the way and cost us almost 2 mins on the first leg. The second leg was a lot better minus the navigators miss of a .5 min pause (I didnt miss this once but twice). First during the rally and the second time last night trying to determine where we landed.

The Third Leg.....
We were headed down through the main road of Midway and we were tinkering on the edge of having no gas. I knew of a close gas station. So we kept going straight instead of hanging a left. Interesting to watch the two cars behind us as they continued to follow us straight pass the turn. Fortunately they did realize they had missed the turn and went back. We continued on to get gas and ended up about 6 mins behind. We headed back through town and got our bearings straight and took off at about 90 mph on some old country rds. Catching up to the two cars that had followed us and passing them. Then catching up to the now first car since we had gone through leg 1 as the second car instead of the first. Realizing that they were also behind we went passed them and made up basically all of our time before the end of the 3rd leg. I think our final score was about 315, 190 (Leg 1), 57 (Leg 2), 68 (Leg 3).

We ended up at Woodford Reserve, where we went on tour and had a sample afterwards. Very nice though small facility. I learned a lot that I was not aware of.

The rest of my evening was not as exciting as I spent most of the night on the computer with work.