Long Way Home Rally

We just got back from the Long Way Home Rally in western New York, and what a great time it was. It was easily worth the 5.5 hour drive out there. The roads were perfect, with recent heavy snow covering everything with a fresh coat of beautiful snow. Conditions varied from snowpacked to a few inches of fresh snow, and everywhere was a challenge to keep the car between the ditches while still maintaining the average speeds. In most cases it was perfect, with the twisty bits causing us to lose time, which we made up (or tried to make up) on the straight bits (maxing out at about 55 MPH before discretion made me ease up on the throttle). This rally was tons of fun for the driver, with quite a few slidy episodes. Neil said the navigating was not as challenging as others we've done, but still fun.

The route started in Piffard, about 45 minutes south of Rochester, and snaked roughly south down back roads almost all the way to Pennsylvania before turning around. The total was 180 miles, over roughly 6 hours.

Here's the route for Part 1 of the rally: Google map
And here's Part 2: Google map

It was also cool being one third of a trio of iXes (mine is the one in the middle):
Every time I drive this car in the snow I'm amazed all over again at what a fantastic snow machine it is.

Neil and I ended up with 211 points (raw score), which was a little high for us but not bad. That put us in 4th in class (just off the podium ), behind three very good teams. We had three legs with a score of 1 (less than a second off over about 10-20 minutes), which we were very happy about.

This was part of the new WINTR rally series, composed of 6 different rallies in the northeastern US and eastern Canada. Next week: Rally des Neiges in Quebec. Vive la neige!

__________
Dave
'91 325iX



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/16/2011 08:25PM by Dave_G.

Quote
Dave_G
We just got back from the Long Way Home Rally in western New York, and what a great time it was. It was easily worth the 5.5 hour drive out there. The roads were perfect, with recent heavy snow covering everything with a fresh coat of beautiful snow. Conditions varied from snowpacked to a few inches of fresh snow, and everywhere was a challenge to keep the car between the ditches while still maintaining the average speeds. In most cases it was perfect, with the twisty bits causing us to lose time, which we made up (or tried to make up) on the straight bits (maxing out at about 55 MPH before discretion made me ease up on the throttle). This rally was tons of fun for the driver, with quite a few slidy episodes. Neil said the navigating was not as challenging as others we've done, but still fun.

The route started in Piffard, about 45 minutes south of Rochester, and snaked roughly south down back roads almost all the way to Pennsylvania before turning around. The total was 180 miles, over roughly 6 hours.

Here's the route for Part 1 of the rally: Google map
And here's Part 2: Google map

It was also cool being one third of a trio of iXes (mine is the one in the middle):
Every time I drive this car in the snow I'm amazed all over again at what a fantastic snow machine it is.

Neil and I ended up with 211 points (raw score), which was a little high for us but not bad. That put us in 4th in class (just off the podium ), behind three very good teams. We had three legs with a score of 1 (less than a second off over about 10-20 minutes), which we were very happy about.

This was part of the new WINTR rally series, composed of 6 different rallies in the northeastern US and eastern Canada. Next week: Rally des Neiges in Quebec. Vive la neige!

Hey Dave

This sounds like so much fun. I know some of those roads you where on (thanks for the maps). Does this happen often?

These last 3-4 weeks we've had snow on the ground most of the time, it's been awhile since we've had a winter in the traditional sense with Snow on the east end of long island, and I've had a chance to get back to driving our two cars; both have LSD's and although Janet's car has better tires for the snow, both are wonderfully good in the snow.

Cheers, Rick

Quote
rkj
This sounds like so much fun. I know some of those roads you where on (thanks for the maps). Does this happen often?

It is fun! There are three SCCA regions in the northeast US that have an active schedule of road rallies:

Finger Lakes Region
New England Region
South Jersey Region

I just did my first Canadian rally. It seems that there are a lot more rallies going on in eastern Canada, especially Ontario, than we get in the U.S. Ferdinand's the guy who knows about all those.

I've done lots of summer/fall rallies and a few winter rallies, but I really love the winter rallies the best.

__________
Dave
'91 325iX