Thanksgiving weekend I traveled up to Bancroft, Ontario for my very first Rally of the Tall Pines. What an experience. I was enroute to the rally and I didn’t really know what to expect. I arrived at the airport in Ottawa, Ontario around 2pm, where Lance Smith (the man behind Vermont Sports Cars) picked me up and we headed to Bancroft which was like three hours away. Shakedown (practice in rally terms) started at 6pm so we went straight to rally headquarters to sign in and go drive.

The point of shakedown is to make sure everything is working properly on the car. So, we’re all checked in and I meet my co-driver Alan Ockwell (He is one of the best in Canada). I had a little trouble in shakedown so I decided that night, I really needed to pull back just a little bit. I needed to finish this rally for experience and driving only a few stages won’t show me a full rally.

Ken and I had to be up at 6am to get over to service where the rally kicks off. Start time for Ken was at 9am for me it was 9:45am .

I started off great and made it through the first 9 stages out of 15 with no serious problems. It was cool I got to pull Ken out of a ditch on stage 3 and that is what rally is all about. The point is to help other drivers and they will help you if you have any mess ups. So here’s where it gets pretty crazy.

On the transit to stage 10 we get a front flat tire, so we pull into a gas station, change the flat and move on because there is a time limit you have to check in. We make it and enter stage 10 and half way through the stage I get another front flat so I finish the stage with three tires basically. So we finish and since I only had one spare I had to put the first flat back (it had like 10 lbs in it) on for stage 11. I was getting to see why they call it a rally.

So, I start stage 11 with a flat and I was fully committed to finish. I think I drove my best that stage because I figured, if we weren’t going to make it, I may as well drive as fast as I can. It was pretty exciting to say the least and we made it, but remember we still had to transit back to service which was like 30km. We get to about 10km away and we lose the entire tire from the rim. Pretty funny. We pull in to service with 3 tires and a rim. The service crew was laughing and was like; “What happened?’. They are used to this kind of stuff.

We start our transit to the final four stages with two spare tires this time. So, stage 12 went great and 13 was going great until about 1km from the finish I get lazy and slide into a ditch. I couldn’t believe it. I was in pretty deep. 3 drivers try to pull us out but no luck. One more try, Nigel Mathews got us out at the last minute before sweep comes through and if sweep has to pull you out you’re DNF’ED. That means you don’t finish. We got out but the front end and the rack of lights were ripped off. So, Alan and I throw the lights in the back of the car and I cable tie the front end on so we can finish stage 13.

The final two stages went great and I finished my first rally. I was so amazed we made it considering the luck we had and not to mention all the ice and snow . This was one of the coolest things I have ever done and I couldn’t have done this alone. Many thanks to Vermont Sports Cars, Lance Smith, Ken Block for all the encouragement, the entire service crew (Chris, Wee-Gee, Dan, and David), Alan Ockwell, and the sport of rally.

Thanks,

Dm

Photos by Andrew Harvey

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 29th, 2007 at 7:51 am and is filed under Rider News. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.