2013 Turkey Tour Rally Master Letter

This was a fun rally to plan, it was time consuming as all rally planning is, but the roads never stopped being entertaining, even when we picked up the signs. To give you an idea of what is involved in planning the rally, when we went to pick up the signs, I drove the entire route, all 69.6 miles of it without checking the instructions. I knew the entire route, but still enjoyed driving it, and saw new cool things every time.

I have to thank Ken Frey for co-chairing this event... he has helped quite a bit with planning and helping in anyway needed. I think with the slowdown in our autocross schedule due to lack of local sites, he is getting involved more in our rally program. Someone help find a site for us to autocross!

There are always a few moments between the last car leaving the start and the first car arriving at the checkpoint where you aren't sure that the rally “works”. I got a couple of phone calls, the more concerning one was from an experienced ralliest, telling me that there are a bunch of cars circling around “Left at “Titicus” and follow 116”. I was concerned about the instruction, although, after running through the next morning to pick up the signs I found where a few teams went off. There was no (intended) trick in this, the general instructions indicate that all signs would be both on the right side of the road and facing you as you pass them. There was another “Titicus” sign along that stretch, but it was on a street sign that was invisible to your line of sight until you were next to it if not past it.

We planned the checkpoint at that spot, because we figured that cars would be going a good pace down route 22, make the 3rd right and we would be sitting right there. The funny thing is that when we arrived at the checkpoint about 20 minutes before the first car should have arrived, almost before we got out of the car, literally within 1 minute of stopping the cars, a car was parking behind us lights blazing (and blinding). I walked to the passenger side of the car to check for a rally car number, and when I got to about the right front wheel, I saw the writing on the hood, “Police”. Hmm, “Hello Officer”. After I explained what we where doing and how long we would be there and that everyone was ok, he left. About an hour later another police car stopped by to check that we were ok, and to tell us when the shift changed. All very nice.

The first car arrived at the checkpoint rather surprised that they were both the first car to arrive and 2 minutes early for their expected time, they were a bit off course at one point and didn't figure that they made up the time. The second and third car to get to the checkpoint were even closer to their actual time. One was 58 seconds off and the other was 68 seconds off... this was going to be a close one. Cars continued to trickle in for another couple of hours, we typically stay at the checkpoint for an hour after the last cars should arrive, unless there are a bunch of late finishers, then we will stay longer.

Half the people finished and one more at Applebees. All I can say is if you didn't finish and have the instructions, go out on a nice day and run the route. It is both beautiful roads that are fun to drive, and good practice for the Bunny Run Rally around Easter next year.

Thanks go out to Ken for co-chairing, Barbara and Kurt Frey for pre-running, Frank and Ed for hanging out with us at the start, finish and Applebees, and Debbi and Gary for registration.

See you at the Bunny Run!

Jesse