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That stage I told you I was in charge of……….. well it all started OK. Everyone turned up on time and they were all in position anticipating the arrival of the cars past their exclusive spot in the forest and we were all good to go.
Now it had been raining all night and was fairly wet in the forest but the roads were in pretty good nick and we hadn’t had any problems on our travels up and down the stage. 00 went through as did 0 and they were happy. (explanation: these are the numbers given to the course opening vehicles in a rally, they are event officials who do the final check of the stage to ensure it is set correctly, – signs, boards, personnel – and everyone is ready to go)
Then I got a call on the radio to hold the first car (which had just arrived and booked in) at the start until further notice.
Then came the call I didn’t want to hear, the event has been called off! What? Yes the forester had decided that it was too wet and that perhaps the roads might not stand up to 45 cars for too much longer. 5 stages had been run and some were to have been used again later in the day. Ours was the 6th and was to be used once. It was also the last stage to be used before they started to use the repeat stages.
So it really sucked that every official in the forest expect the 25 odd on our stage got to see rally cars in anger.
I don’t really have any problem with them calling it off, they own the roads and allow us to use them and the event may have had a huge road damage bill if it had continued. I don’t think our stage would have cut up too badly and it was disappointing more from the point of view that all those people gave up most of a Saturday and got to see nothing.
Me, well I’m into the whole thing so I’ll be back no matter what, but some of the others, especially the 1st timers, might think twice when asked again. I don’t have an answer, because I don’t think there is one.
Hopefully I was communicative enough and explained it well enough that they will give it another go.
Now it had been raining all night and was fairly wet in the forest but the roads were in pretty good nick and we hadn’t had any problems on our travels up and down the stage. 00 went through as did 0 and they were happy. (explanation: these are the numbers given to the course opening vehicles in a rally, they are event officials who do the final check of the stage to ensure it is set correctly, – signs, boards, personnel – and everyone is ready to go)
Then I got a call on the radio to hold the first car (which had just arrived and booked in) at the start until further notice.
Then came the call I didn’t want to hear, the event has been called off! What? Yes the forester had decided that it was too wet and that perhaps the roads might not stand up to 45 cars for too much longer. 5 stages had been run and some were to have been used again later in the day. Ours was the 6th and was to be used once. It was also the last stage to be used before they started to use the repeat stages.
So it really sucked that every official in the forest expect the 25 odd on our stage got to see rally cars in anger.
I don’t really have any problem with them calling it off, they own the roads and allow us to use them and the event may have had a huge road damage bill if it had continued. I don’t think our stage would have cut up too badly and it was disappointing more from the point of view that all those people gave up most of a Saturday and got to see nothing.
Me, well I’m into the whole thing so I’ll be back no matter what, but some of the others, especially the 1st timers, might think twice when asked again. I don’t have an answer, because I don’t think there is one.
Hopefully I was communicative enough and explained it well enough that they will give it another go.
More later. Ciao.
Tired
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I’m in charge on a stage this weekend and Juha is jealous. I’ll be tootling around in one of his favorite forests around Powelltown in Victoria.
Should be a nice day with a 47 car field and the 1st round of the Victorian Rally Championship (VRC).
This is a bit of a nothing post to test the blog editor I just installed in my browser.
Ciao
Tired.
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