I had a chance to go back to LSPR this year as a competitor. 2000 marked my first year back to the rally in 15 years when I drove up on a lark from Toledo, Ohio and ended up working controls for the event. I missed last year because we were moving into a new house on LSPR weekend but this year I had the opportunity to co-drive for Scott Harvey Jr. in his PGT Talon. We ran Magnum Opus last month and I was able to get my feet wet again in the right hand seat, a position I hadn't occupied since 1985.

We made good time on the drive up Thursday, 8 1/2 hours from the north side of Detroit with the only drama being a very localized heavy snowstorm blowing off Lake Michigan into the town of Gros Cap about 5 miles west of the Big Mac Bridge. As we drove into it, we had sudden thoughts about a difficult trip across the Upper Peninsula but it turned out that the three mile wide band was to be the only snow we saw on the drive to Houghton. They sure picked the wrong spot to build the town of Gros Cap!

We stayed at the Chippewa Motel in Chassel about 6 miles south of Houghton. A classic old 12 room establishment the way motels used to be. Al and Betty Kotila run a real laid-back operation. When I called for my reservation a few weeks back, Al told me that room #10 would be open and waiting for us with the key in the door and that we should just look them up at some point before we left on Sunday to pay the bill. Speed Channel and the Weather Channel were both on the tube and we even had Betty's complementary fresh baked cookies and brownies at the door to our room every morning. We'll go back again. Rally registration at the Franklin Square Inn was effortless and we picked up our stage notes from Kurt's minions. It would be Scott's first time with notes and my first since I drove the 1973 POR to the notes prepared by Doug Woods and Randy Black. These stage notes would require some study on my part! We ended up at the Library for dinner on Friday. My Black and Blue burger was pretty decent and the Copper Town Red microbrew was more than acceptable and the conversation with Phil Smith about MG's was fun. Back to the FSI to chat with some friends and meet some others face to face like Kim DeMotte and Charlie Cotterman and get some advice on the notes from Adrian Wintle. We eventually found our way back to the Library for a couple more Reds and had a nice chat with Bob Olson and Conrad Ketelson about Porsches and how to use the stage notes. Back at the motel I spent some time reviewing the notes and adding a few cautions from the route book to the stage notes books.

Friday morning's brekkie at the Suomi Café was followed by painless and efficient tech inspection in Hancock. Back at HQ, Pete Lahm gave a course in stage note fundamentals and then we killed a little time at the motel waiting for Parc Expose. At Parc Expose I finally met "Mad" Mike. After a nice weather morning, true to the Weather Channel forecast, it started to rain at Parc Expose and continued fairly steadily and occasionally pretty hard through the day eventually turning to snow as it got colder. For one of the rare times during the event we had cell phone coverage as we pulled out of Houghton and were able to reach our service crew to arrange a tire swap during the 10 minute service at Baraga. We were fortunate to have lucked into an arrangement for a three team effort from the Detroit area for coordinated service along with the crews for Steve Baumbach/ Jim Gentz and Joel Sanford/ Scott Sanford all helping each other out. Brian Scott headed up the effort with his well equipped box truck set up for his C.A.R.S. campaigns. Jamie Quaderer and others were along as well as Joel and Scott who were only running the Saturday Keweenaw Club rally. Our guy, Joe Sladovich, was a service crew rookie and learned a lot from the others' expertise. Much thanks goes out to all for their efforts over the weekend.

The crew swapped out our Michelins for the Kumhos and we were off to try our luck at the stages. Herman was the first stage and is pretty darn slippy. 1.13 miles in we encountered our 1st car off, James Robinson and Jim Newton in their Ford Sierra. Less than a mile later, Shane Mitchell and Paul Donnelly are off in their Subie. Hmmm, this could be interesting... Not long later we slide off the right side of the road on the exit of a lefthander but our all-wheel-drive gets up back on after we mow down a little brush and throw some branches up over the windshield. Okay, time to be careful, don't take any chances and survive the stage. We're not fast but it was a chance to begin to work on relating the notes to what we see on the road. Stage 2, Menge Creek, was lost to spectator problems part way through the running order so we transited it and practiced timing of the calls.

After service to secure a loose gas tank skid shield, Stage 3 was a repeat of Herman and we again worked on synchronizing what I was reading to what Scott was seeing and figuring out the subtleties of corner grades, distances on straights, opens and tightens, turns over crests, late apexes and all the other varieties of calls. We were a few seconds slower the second time through Herman although we were being extra careful where the two cars went off and also where we had our off-course excursion. Most of the club rally cars turned slower times on the second run as the road continued to deteriorate.

We were off to Kenton and the two run-throughs of Far Point and Passmore. Our 1st runs of those stages went pretty well with the coordination in the cockpit continuing to improve and we felt okay about our performance. Services continued to be flawless with all the little issues attended to by the crews and we were able to concentrate on rallying. After the loss of Stage 2, the restart order was essentially based on Herman 1 for most crews and so our conservative start cost us a few positions on the road, but no matter.

It was dark and snowing as we started Far Point 2 and visibility was marginal. Driving lights made it worse as they lit up the falling snow and destroyed your line of sight to the road. About four miles in, Scott says: "I think we have a flat." Me: "Eight miles to the end of the stage, right three over crest, one twenty." Scott: "We'll try to drive it." Two miles later it was apparent it wasn't going to happen so we found a wide spot to stop. The normal circus ensued when a crew hasn't practiced changing tires: triangle, flashlight, lugs, jack (damn two piece handle POS), spare, old wheel (hmm, no inside sidewall left at all, this is going to need a really good tube), lugs on and tightened, jack down and in the back hatch, get the triangle, back in the car, helmet, intercom, belts, notes and we are back on the road ten minutes later and about six or seven cars down. One approaches just as we are ready to go so we wait so we won't hold him up. Eric Seppanen and Jake Himes in their Sentra go by.

Having another car in front makes road following much easier and we are almost immediately on their bumper. They pull over to let us by but a few corners later while I am still settling back in to the notes I missed a left three turn at a side road and we wrong slot straight ahead. Eric got back past us and we decided that after having lost ten minutes to the tire we should just follow him to the finish. Stage 7, Passmore 2 was more of the same horrible visibility so we wisely decided to make the conservative decision and finish the event and start fresh tomorrow.

We're in to the Main Time Control in Kenton at 10:25 PM and back to Houghton before midnight although we still end up doing the gourmet thing at Burger King. Somehow that suited our fortunes of the day... We end up 16th of 20 finishers overall and 3rd in PGT in the Ottawa Club and figure that our flat tire cost us about nine spots o'all and one in class. Oh well, that's the nature of this game!

Saturday dawned with much greater promise for a nice day. We track down the service truck and change back to the Michelins, mount a tire to replace the destroyed one and do some other maintenance on the Talon. Breakfast is pasties from the Suomi eaten while servicing but they are good and filling. We don't need to eat again until dinner! Parc Expose at the Quincy Mine Hoist was fun and a chance to meet and talk to many other competitors. The Keweenaw Club promised seven stages that should be fun (well six fun ones after having gotten the obligatory Thayers Lake out of the way) including a shot at Brockway that Scott was really looking forward to.

Thayers Lake was everything it was supposed to be: 7.2 miles of rough, rough, sloppy and rough. A hundred feet in to the stage sits Chris Havas and Dave Kean's Golf at the side of the road, mechanical maybe? A couple of tenths in around a left five into water is Dan and Matt Malott's open class Talon stuffed into the trees on the right with the rear axle significantly dislodged from the car. We readopt our strategy toward car-breaker stages and do what we can to ensure a finish. This costs us a minute to some of the competition but we didn't come here to just run a few miles, we want to do the whole event. At the 6.08 miles mark of Stage 1, our odo quits. Apparently the rough part of the "Left four over crest Rough" dislodges the magnet or the sensor but we no longer have any indication of where we are. That isn't fatal when you have the notes but it is nice to have the mileages to help you recover when you get lost in the series of turns and aren't sure what's next. It just notches up the intensity level for me a few levels to make sure I stay on top of the notes and our position in the stages.

At service we try to diagnose the problem but it is hidden by the skidplate and not easily accessible so the decision is made for me. We will do the rest of the event without any mileages. Well shoot, if this was supposed to be easy, anybody could do it, right? I notice another new problem I didn't have Friday. At times I can't separate some of the pages in the stage note book to turn them while on stage. It causes a few momentary heart palpitations while I fumble and get behind a couple of times on Stages 1 and 2. I'm thinking I'm just being particularly non-dexterous today until I talk after the event to James Burtis who was co-driving for Ron Nelson in an EVO and he mentions that he had the exact same problem with Saturday's book. After Stage 2, I dog-ear all the pages for each stage before we start it and the problem is solved. Stage 2, Gratiot Lake, is pretty fast and relatively smooth except the occasional bumps, mud and slippies. We see a car off 4.5 miles in but I don't recall who it was. We are getting to the point where we are developing a pretty decent confidence in the notes and our section times are improving with them.

Stage 3, Delaware, is four and a quarter miles of fast fast and the site of Pro Rally's only tailgate party at the Delta. It's big fun and Scott finesses the car well through the major ruts of the delta. Stage 4, Burma, is a little rougher and narrow but a good run on the way into Copper Harbor. Near the end of the stage we smell burning rubber and Scott sees some smoke behind the car and thinks maybe we have a tire going bad. At Copper Harbor service we diagnose a bad alternator belt and fortunately Todd Jarvey in a Galant has one he can spare us. However we also find that we have lodged a rock in the left rear trailing arm against the tire and it has started to wear a groove in the inside rim protector of the Michelin. We find it while we're putting on the pavement tires for Brockway but will be using a different Michelin when we put the rally tires back on after that stage.

Harvey/ Gardam place the flying Eagle in a nose-down attitude as they > prepare to land after the famous Brockway Mountain jump. 2002 Keweenaw > Challenge Club Rally, October 19th. Photo by: Jerry Winker

Scott's ready for Brockway. He feels he knows the stage pretty well and does a lot of autocross stuff when he's not rallying and loves running on pavement. This will be my first competitive time on the mountain but I've seen the pictures and there is a slight bit of wariness in the pit of my stomach about the prospects of going flying. This stage is only 3.66 miles long and paved, how can there be six pages of stage notes? Well at least it'll give me something to do instead of just watching out the windshield for the inevitable big yump. Just to give me a little more time to contemplate my future or lack of it, we endure about a fifteen minute delay since the stage started late while police and spectator issues were taken care of. But soon enough we're rocketing up the hill into a left three long, left six over long crest, right six long over crest into left six long over crest into crest caution and on and on it goes. Before I know it we have gotten in the air four or five times including the big one at the top and have done the 3.66 miles in 3:14. I'm grinning like a fool at the finish. In the club rally we turn the 4th best time behind three open class cars and overall there are only 13 cars with better times than ours. Not too bad with our totally stock engine.

Stages 6, 7 and 8 provide reverse direction trips back on Burma, Delaware and Gratiot Lake. We match our previous time on Burma and improve on both Delaware by six seconds and on Gratiot by 21 seconds. These stage notes are a pretty cool thing after all. And especially without having any mileages to work with, the notes raise our confidence level for the bashes down the roads. We end up with a ninth overall of 25 finishers and 4th in class in the Keweenaw. We're pretty happy with the results and felt we did okay on those stages that you could actually drive. We'll just have to find a way to work on our speed on the roads where you have to survive!

We had a great time running the Club rallies and our thanks to the Lake Superior Region for continuing to support our level of the sport, both here and at the Magnum Opus Rally last month. We'll never be playing the game at the top level of Pro but we're glad that we can have an opportunity to do it our way and at a level that's comfortable to us. Give it a try and come on over from the "dark" side. It's all about having fun in the woods. Hope to see you at Sno*, at Drift, and at 100 Acre Wood.

Kent Gardam

(some editing by Scott Harvey)