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| Jeremy Fry is my hero as I love old TE71 Corollas. |
Rally Lesson number 2- Somehow learn how to deal with grumpy race officials; I suggest to try showing beaubies unless the official in question is female or you don’t have any beaubies handy. Be sure to bring some.
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| Travis Pastrana at speed | Ken Block |
About an hour later a dirty, tired, grumpy and thirsty Casey appears. Apparently he had to run several miles in the heat to find a good place to get some action shots. He has been pelted with gravel and dirt and looks pretty messy. By now we realize we have missed the 3rd stage and most of the 4th stage. We are trying to get to the 4th stage and get a frantic call on our cell phones from Dave. The car has died on a transit stage and he is stranded at some gas station somewhere in Palmdale. We rush towards his location at warp speed. About 20 minutes later, Dave calls again saying that he has solved the problem, which was the Mass Air Flow Meter falling off and is now limping back to the service point back in Palmdale.
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| Brian Scott | George Plsek’s EVO was a top contender all weekend. | Wolfgang Hoeck |
Rally Lesson number 3- Make sure everyone has a cell number and has everyone else’s number.
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| The Beater | The Beater again |
Dave is starving and wants fried chicken so we then set off in pursuit of some KFC that I pay for. 30 minutes later; chicken in hand, we arrive at the service area to find a hungry Dave and Amar. The rally is not going well; Dave’s driving is rusty and the car is not running well. Dave digs in to eat while I secure the airflow meter and redo its mounts to make sure it won’t fall off again using safety wire, duct tape and zip ties.
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| Dave and Sarah eat chicken during the service. I was working on the car at this point. |
Dave with chicken. |
More chicken, I think I am obsessed with the memory of the chicken I didn’t get to eat. |
Rally lesson number 4- Don’t fix the car if there is food and you are hungry. If everyone else is hungry, let them pay.
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| Whoops, Vartan Samuelian stuffs it into a bank. No one was hurt. |
I finish fixing the car to find that the chicken is gone and so are all of the drinks. While I try to salvage some food, Dave and Amar set off for the superstage which is sorta like a stadium motocross race for cars set inside the local football field. The superstage is actually pretty cool where spectators can watch rally cars jump and slide from comfortable bleachers. I think this is way cooler than watching the drifting event taking place in the stadium’s parking lot. Some cars go for maximum height and distance to please the crowd while others take it easy. Dave takes it easy and gets booed. If they only knew that he had to drive the car home. Some cars don’t make the jumps and end up crashing spectacularly. Fortunately rally cars have very stringent cage rules and no one is hurt in the least.
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| Chad Dykes | Jimmy Keeney | Kristopher Marciniak |
Casey is on course taking pictures and sweating away in the 100 degree heat in the rules mandated long pants. He is also wearing a black T-shirt. At the end of the stage he returns coated with dust like a piece of shake and bake chicken while being sunburned a bright shade of red.
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| The action in the spectator friendly superstage was intense two on two racing though a Supercross like course set in a stadium. |
