I got a trophy at a rally once :) (archive)

Many years ago back in Chicago, my buddy Bob Mack (a genuine Elton John lokk-a-like!) and I had run a LOT of gimmick rallys with the Kankakee Fiat X 1/9 Club. But on impulse, we went and tried a TSD rally for the giggles. And our first and ONLY time we did one, we trophied! Yep, real rally pro's we were! The trophy was a painted porcelin Snail with DLBF on it! DEAD LAST BUT FINISHED! We LOVED it (the trophy that is), and if we had done ANYTHING better, we would not have gotten it! It was the butt of many a joke for years, and I still cherrish it.

But as rally's go, a TSD is for the really hard core computer/calculator/slide rule type folks. It does take quite a bit of skill (mathmatical) and PATIENCE to place well, as you have to maintain a SET speed and time to make it to the checkpoints at the exact time. Speeding is NOT part of it - sometimes it was nearly required to go UNDER the posted speed limits to do it right. But then, . . . . some of us would speed along, then WAIT near the checkpoint till the time was right to approach it.

But now FUN for the whole family (including the kids) would be a GIMMICK rally. This is NOT based on time/speed/distance as much. You get a set of route instructions, many being mispelled (on purpose), and you are let go. But you have to read between the lines, for there are many jokes, gags, and riddles that you have to decipher to do well. There might be an instruction to turn left on a street named BALLY Way, but the instructions say BALLE WAY. If you turned on this street, you begin your OFF COURSE journey and a merry adventure. But if you read your complete route instructions, you'd also have seen that MISPELLED WORDS are to be ignored and the make the planned turn 1 or more streets AFTER the wrong name - off course they even had the WRONG routes planned out as well :)

Then, when at a checkpoint, you might get handed an addendum that tells you to do something totally different from the route instructions. But then again, there might have been another MASTER RULE stating which takes priority, etc etc etc!!! This type of rally gets the whole family involved, with everyone looking all over for the hints, checkpoints, mispelling, and gags. The kids always loved it. Now they did also take into effect milage, and how much fun it used to be to backup my old Spitfire to count BACKWARDS the odo! And the charachters that we used to run with! Sometimes we'd all sort of hide and wait for the guy who we all thought was good and follow him, ha ha! Only later ot find out he was as lost as we were!

Oh, and the SEASONAL rallys! One of the BEST around was Kankakee's Holloween Night Rally! This was complete with haunted houses, George Sanchez as Dracula popping out of coffins in a room with walls closing in on you to hand you an addendum, spooky barns out in the middle of lonely cornfields, hanging (and TALKING) bodies from trees, all sorts of stuff!

WE all used to have a saying about these gimmick rallys - BEFORE you ever get married, take the fiance on a gimmick rally - if you both survived till the end, you were made for each other!

Then, there was an anual event in Chicago on New Years Day called the Happy Hangover XXXX. This was more or less a treasure hunt throughout a section of Chicago downtown with boundries. You got a list of what you needed to get, and away you go! One year, in the MIDDLE OF WINTER, an old guy showed up with an old MG0TD with the top down, wearing the traditional tweed, car, scarf, goggles, and PIPE!

So, it all boils down to a few things. If you don't want to race on a track or SutoX, but still do something competitive, there ARE alternatives.

For the math genius and patient folks - TSD Rally

For the speed freaks - SCCA PRO Rally

For the family - Gimmick and Treasure Hunt Rallys

Follow Ups:

I will take the second one... SCCA...Spead Freak Mr M Coupe 14:13 7/08/2000 (0)

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