,
Now that you understand the need for a good battery and a service crew, let me explain the need for a surplus German Army shovel. The Leona Ridge stage is a long, tight stage that frustrates underpowered cars with its loose, sandy surface and snarls the powerful open-class cars with its narrow roads. My adequately powered little box was proving to be the weapon of choice on Leona, easily churning the loose soil and using its narrowness to achieve an unlikely pace. In spite of having to back off for a few miles to nurse some minor overheating, we were on pace to set a blazing stage time….until.
It took me a while to realize it, but over four and a half years, I had forgotten a lot of the subtleties that once made this car fast. Subtleties like how to make it turn when you’re braking hard into a downhill left less than a quarter mile from the end of the stage. Generally you make any rally car turn by using the brakes. In most cases a little bit of braking as you turn the wheel makes things start happening. But when you’re already braking hard, releasing the brakes makes it turn. It was only as I was understeering off the outside of the road, climbing a scrub-covered cliff wall and coming to rest perched precariously on two wheels and a bush that I actually remembered that second part.
Lucky for us, unlucky for him, there happened to be a spectator within shouting distance. We shouted, he pushed, but no matter how loud we yelled or how vigorously we gesticulated, he was unwilling or unable to singlehandedly lift our car clean off the ground and place it back on the road. As Amar again ran back to do the triangle dance I joined the grunting for a few minutes before finally identifying a particularly robust undercar bush as the sole impediment to our progress. With nothing but bare hands, rocks and tire changing tools to do our gardening, our rally would have ended right there. But being experienced in the art of crashing, I was prepared with the German Army shovel, a short-handled, foldable device that can be locked at a 90-degree angle and used as a hatchet should the proper motivation arise.
After a seven-minute delay, we rolled through the finish control dripping sweat. This would also be a good time to point out the importance of maintaining your physical fitness.
