Our roving photojournalist, Amber Door, sent in some pictures from the recent Gimmick Rally hosted by Ted and Gabriele Blacklidge. It was another fun event, but Amber reports that the end of the rally was "...far too rainy for any photographs."
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If you have been wondering just what a "Gimmick Rally" is, here's Amber's full report:
The first annual running of WMR PCA “Give it a try” “It’s not a race” Gimmick Rally was held on Saturday June 3, 2006. Our hosts and rally workers were Ted and Gabi Blacklidge with the support of Eric and Lena Spross. The sun was shining brightly as the 10 Porsches, and 1 Buick arrived at the designated meeting place on Plainfield. Spirits were high as most of us, save a few seasoned rallyers, anticipated the start of our first rally event. We were released every 5 minutes to ensure that nobody followed one another. Most of us had carefully read the pre- event instructions –
1. Bring a navigator, co-pilot, spouse or significant other.
There was a reason that this was the first directive. It became clear when we were handed 7 pages of paper before starting the event. The first were 2 pages of general instructions with a lot of “good things to know”. On them were all of the definitions to the abbreviations that would be required to complete the rally. Without those valuable instructions we may not have known that “at” meant “in the immediate proximity of the intended point” and OPP was “any public paved road” (i.e. a paved drive in a public park) and of course we would have been lost if we did not know what a “marble orchard” was, as we would encounter many of them along the drive.
For some of us, it did not take very long to figure out that doing a rally with your spouse is be like hanging wallpaper, putting up a Christmas tree and canoeing. It may be better if done without your spouse (but it sure makes for good laughs when the experience is over!). This was evident by comments such as, “OK, we participated, now if we could just find our way back without having to follow the rest of the instructions we could have a beer” and “If there were a gun in the car we would both be dead”. Maybe that is why a couple of our seasoned members just chose to disregard this primary instruction altogether and go it alone.
2. Bring a clipboard or study pad of paper.
This was so that we would have something to write quickly on because the whole point of the gimmick rally was to follow the directions and answer the questions along the route correctly, or be deducted 10 points for each wrong answer. We were given 13 questions to find the answers to along the route (i.e. What is the White Swan?) If you did not find the White Swan you could not follow the direction to turn left after it. Can you say – Lost? . There were 3 additional questions in the “good things to know” that could come up anywhere along the route (i.e. what does the butler hold? – this one stumped many a driver / navigator. No, the answer was not a dish, pot or cloth) and then the “tie breaker” at the end – a story problem with an looking at average speed, time and total course length (not counting the counter-clockwise u-turn that was required in the Euro Autoworks parking lot) recalculated into kilometers. But, it was all in the name of fun!
3. Bring a pencil with an eraser (or extra paper, because some of us, yes I will admit it, do not want eraser bits in my baby)
If you are really confident you could have brought a pen, but what if you dropped it and you got ink on something?
4. Bring a highlighter
Prior to leaving we were given a few hints. Every hint seemed to consist of “keep your eyes open” and “it may be difficult”. At that point I felt like highlighting everything on the page, like a use college textbook. Take a minute to flash back to our navigator-less drivers doing this on their own.
5. Bring a calculator
Yes, a calculator on a driving event. This is because the other objective of the rally was to stay on course (that means – don’t get lost, something that proved an easy thing for many of us) and complete the rally in the same distance that our planners did. You suffered a penalty for every 1/10 of mile you were over or under. This was most critical for a participant with 15-inch wheels (who shall not be named, but was driving a blue ’75 911) because the mileage racks up faster. This makes me think that I should get extra credit when I walk with taller people because I have to walk that much faster/farther than they do. We also have to remember our purest German car participants that have odometers that only record kilometers (1 mile = 1.6093km). A calculator comes in handy for the conversion. And the calculator helped with that tie breaker question.
6. Bring a cell phone
Just in case you became lost – and were willing to call and admit that you could not back track to get back on course! Our host provided us with their cell numbers just in case. I did not hear anyone admit to using them.
We learned many things during and after the rally – that a bunch of type A personalities with “directions” to follow in fast cars moving slowly (or in some cases stopped with drivers looking like they didn’t know where they were going) make for some great laughs (when the event is done), GPS in a Buick reportedly does not help the participants (it was probably the Buick itself that helped – it looked better sitting on the side of the road to the navigator could write down the answers), the Butler holds corn or grain (because it is a silo), a “Marble orchard” is a place where marble or granite in the shape of headstones sprout out of the ground in great abundance, the White Swan is a “marble orchard”, the route was 37.6 miles (with the average speed less than that per hour (If your a purest you can do the km calculations) and everyone had a great time!
We are happy to report that although not every question was answered by every participant, everyone made it to Pietro’s at the completion of the rally for a great meal with friends. We were all happy rain held off, for most of us, until we were in the restaurant (we all thought we should get extra points for having our cars in a torrential rainstorm) and the fun we had was well worth the dirt on the car. We can’t wait until next year.
Congratulations to the official Rally winners Kevin Pinned and his navigator (see, no spouse), EJ and Helene Czarnopys and Terry and Dorilee Schieble.
