Miatatude

Last weekend at the races when there was break in the action some of us were sitting around at Camp POS When this fellow walked up and asked if I would do him a favor. I said sure and followed him over to a concrete pad.

There sat his race car. I said, “Nice color.” He started to tell me about how there were only so many made in that color and what years it was available not realizing he was talking to a Miata Geek, I stopped him by saying that I had a 95 in the same color, Laguna Blue, before my current car and still miss that hue.

He was doing an alignment and needed someone to sit in the driver’s seat to simulate having himself in the car, so it would be set up correctly. I said, “Oh, you need some dead weight. I’m just the guy you need.” The car had a full roll cage and a racing seat and even with the steering wheel off it took some major contortionist moves to get in. Getting back out was even a little worse.

Donna and Carol had followed us over to stand around and make fun of me. Carol, of course, had her camera, so she snapped a couple of quick photos of me sitting in the car while I was making vroom-vroom sounds.

After he was done and thanked me for the time I made my way back to Camp POS. John was done with his latest adventure, so I asked if he wanted me to turn in my POS Racing hat because I had helped that other Miata out. He said, “Don’t worry about it, he’s in a different class.”

There was a 40% chance of afternoon thunder showers. We took the umbrella to work, but left it in the trunk. My job was to keep track of the radar and if it looked like thunder rolling our way I was to go out, take off the cockpit cover, raise the top and bring the umbrella back in.

I failed miserably at my job. When it was time to go home at 4:00 PM I got up from my desk and walked down to the other end pf the plant to get Donna. As I passed by some windows it looked very dark. Uh-oh! As we left the plant someone was walking in with an umbrella saying that it had just started raining. He was right and they were big fat drops too. As we walked quickly to the car the rain intensity picked up rapidly. We started running (this is the only time I regret parking in the north forty), it was coming down at a pretty good clip by the time we reached the car. I popped the trunk tossed in everything I was carrying and started to take off the cockpit cover. Tossed the roof up and Donna tried valiantly to click it down while I wadded up the soaking wet cockpit cover and tossed it too into the trunk. I started the car and raised the windows as the rain poured down. The interior was pretty dry, but we were pretty wet.

About a mile from the plant the skies really opened up, even with the wipers on high I had to slow down because of visibility. Then it sounded like somebody was shooting at us. Pow! Bam! Rat-A-Tat-Tat! Call 911 we’re under fire. It was hailing. Pea-sized up to grape-sized frozen water was pelting us. With absolutely no place to hide I just kept driving. I’m afraid to go out in the garage to look at the car and see if there are any little dents, but not as afraid as I was during the storm that the hail would get big enough to start tearing through the canvas roof and start hitting me on my noggin. After a couple more miles, and a couple more cloud bursts, the skies cleared, the rain stopped and we donned our sunglasses for the rest of the trip.

We read and understood the instructions, at least we thought we did. Take a look at the scan of the instructions (click to zoom), I think you can read them pretty good.

All but the first few instructions consist of a picture, a direction (right or left) and a number. The number represents the opportunity after the picture at which you should turn in the direction specified. … Pictured objects may be on either side of the road. Opportunities: Paved streets and roads on the same side as your next turn are opportunities. Dead-end or “no outlet” streets or roads, if paved are opportunities. Driveways, entrances to parking lots, and unpaved streets or roads are not opportunities. Opportunities are reset by a numbered instruction.

What we both knew would be trouble was the way the photos were to be followed. On the front there were two rows of three, the back consisted of 3 rows of 3 columns and you were supposed to read them the way they are numbered, in columns.

For a change of pace this time, Donna drove and I acted as navigator, she wanted me to experience the pressure of responsibility instead of just whistling while I drove. We left the start point first brimming with confidence.

We spotted our first picture with ease after exiting the interstate and then the trouble began. I started counting opportunities when the driver questioned my counting method, ie. she wanted to know why we weren’t counting on both sides of the street. While I explained my interpretation of the rules to her she kept driving. During this brief interlude I could not maintain 100% vigilance on opportunity counting. Uh-oh, 4 miles into the event and we were already in a cloud of uncertainty.

We arrived at a major intersection which seemed to be a natural spot for our turn, but I was only at 6 and we needed to take the 7th turn. We turned anyway. After driving about 5 miles we started to worry, we had not yet spotted the next clue, a water tower. Was that opportunity 6 we turned at instead of the correct #7? We agreed to go to the top of the next rise and if there was no tower we would turn around. Well there was no tower so Donna did a u-turn. Half way back to the scene of our supposed mistake we passed car #2 going in the opposite direction (the one we used to be traveling in.) We have finished 2nd or 3rd to the couple in this car the last 2 years. The uncertainty clouds just thickened a bit.

Pressing on, hoping that they miscounted too, when we got to the spot where we turned, we took a left and started looking for what might be the 7th left opportunity. We passed a lot of dirt roads, a few driveways and we also passed going in the opposite direction from us, car #3. They obviously thought this was a wrong course of action. We kept on and when we found what we thought would be the “correct” left turn, it was a dead-end. While dead-ends are opportunities, driving down one at this point would not be a good idea. Time to turn around again.

Sure enough, the other turn was the correct one, not a mile past were we had turned around, was the water tower. As we passed opportunity #3 and on our way to taking the next right, we came up behind car #4. They turned and we turned right behind them. I told Donna to go around them so we could make up the time we had lost in our ill-fatted attempt at the start. She gunned it and zipped on by. We were back in the hunt.

But not for long, I then did exactly what we thought I would, instead of going to the top of the third column, I reverted to my early childhood training and read from left to right, skipping right to clue number 8, bypassing clue 7 entirely. Even though we didn’t take a left because of the missed clue we ended up on course somehow, but we started counting opportunities too soon. Wen we got to where the next clue should have been, we found the railroad tracks, but the road in the background looked different than what was in the photo. Figuring it was just parallax error we turned right as if everything was hunky-dory. Sure enough the next clue, #10, was on the road we were on.

We found number 11, 12 and 13 before not seeing #14 at all. Figuring we missed it and coming to a tee intersection, we took a right because that was what we were supposed to do at the first opportunity after the missing clue. Hot-diggity, clue #15 was right where it should have been which led us to number sixteen and then #17 and the end of the rally.

In spite of the “detour” we were the first car to finish and because of a clue at the end of the instructions, we thought we were early. Knowing this and that we missed some clues possibly shortcutting the route I took our time and distance figured and padded them using a SWAG (scientific wild ass guess) and handed in our sheet. In the end, even if I handed in our true figures, we would have still ended up in third, but only because car #3 arrived a full two and a half hours after we did, having made four attempts at running the rally until they were successful just so they wouldn’t have to open the emergency envelope.

Wait’ll next year.