Most of the rallyes held in the valley were of the Gimmick variety as opposed to Time and Distance (T&D). Gimmick rallyes have two key elements. The first element is the ability to follow instructions. Instructions are broken down into several sections: General, Special, Route, etc. The secret is to follow them quite literally. The more you think you understand and the more you interpolate, the deeper trouble you find yourself in. The second element is the power of observation. The navigator’s job is to relay the route instructions to the driver and to watch for signs and course markers. The driver’s job is to pilot the car and help the navigator keep an eye open for landmarks along the road. The navigator has instruction sets and a sheet of questions much like a high school quiz. The winner does not necessarily get to the finish line first, but does have the most correct answers on the score sheet. Variations on this theme include checkpoints, course markers, poker hands, and the like. Lest you think that this is all there might be, any one of these answers or checkpoints may be correct or bogus! That first rallye was fun. It set the wheels in motion for a pastime that I have never tired of. I realized years later that it also provided me with the proper attitude towards a type of event that has been known to cause fisticuffs, lead to divorce, and quite possibly war between nations. To some, rallyes are food for hungry egos. The importance of a small tin cup, pewter mug, or other trinket sometimes overshadows sportsmanship and enjoyment. There are a lot of frustrated Olympians out there trying to make up for their shortcomings by driving on rallyes!
Gimmick rallyes are not speed events. However, it is tough to stay focused. It’s a nice day. The top is off. The roads are twisty and full of other sports cars. In the mid sixties, when I started to drive, I spent most of every weekend on rallyes with my friends. Sports cars and related activities were quite popular in the San Francisco Bay area in those days. Traffic was not like what it is today. Sports cars were everywhere. Triumph and BMC had dealerships in most of the major cities. The merger into British-Leyland and the subsequent decline in performance, sales, and service had not begun. Ralph Nader did not yet have an air of respectability. There were many car clubs. Most in the San Jose-Sunnyvale area belonged to a larger federation known as the Four Cylinder Club of America. There were many chapters. I belonged to a club by the name of Le Vivo Machine’ (pronounced in California French as Lay Veevo Ma-shin-nay). The name was supposed to translate to The Living Machine, or some such thing. If you were an FCCA club member, a discount was offered for events put on by other charter clubs. We’re not talking big money here. These things were generally $2.50 to $3.00 with a fifty cent discount for club members. On the other hand, there would be seventy five to one hundred cars at some of the events. Most that we attended started in the Standford Shopping Center in Palo Alto. There was also heavy rallye activity out of Lake Merritt in Oakland.
What does the typical rallyist need? The quintessential tool is the clipboard. The basic version is not really enough. You need a board for your route instructions and one for your generals and specials. You gotta put your answer sheet somewhere too. Places like MG Mitten in Hollywood and other specialty shops sold dual clipboards with pencil holders and stopwatch clips. Some had graceful loops cut in them so that they would fit neatly on your legs while you completed all the sections successfully. In reality you would scream at the driver to slow down because you didn’t see that last street sign, papers would be billowing around the cockpit, and you dropped your pencil between the seat and the transmission tunnel. Meanwhile the driver blasted on oblivious to anything you said, imagining himself as Edgar Barth, cutting a fast lap at the Targa Florio. Night rallyes required a light of some kind so that you could see street signs and course markers. Flashlights would not do. Those same establishments that sold clipboards also sold 12 volt hand held spotlights. It was possible to plug one of these into your cigarette lighter and create havoc on any street. You must remember though that some cars, like the little Sprite, did not have cigarette lighters. Shade tree mechanics had to wire up alligator clips to their battery or some such connection. I remember more than once seeing a navigator flailing about in the cockpit as overheated narrow gauge wiring smoked the insulation right off! One night on an East Bay rallye, my bladder had reached it’s maximum load and I stopped next to an orchard to relieve myself. To Stephanie’s delight, and my mortification, some of the other entrants saw our car stopped and shined their spotlights into the orchard to see what we might have found. I don’t think that what they saw was entered on their scoresheets.
How does the rallyist dress? Only with the finest road ensemble, of course. In addition to the tweed cap and string back gloves one must have a club jacket. Typically light nylon, these matching jackets would have the club patch, the FCCA patch, and one denoting marque. If you really wanted to go overboard, you could have all that and patches from tracks like Laguna Seca. For those with the subtle approach, a pair of gloves and a light jacket with just the car patch would do.
The generic rallye would wind it’s way out of the valley and up into the Santa Cruz mountains. Most of us knew those roads very well. In those days there were very few homes up in the scrub oaks and very few cops either. The exceptional events included quite a bit for your two bucks. There were 1"x 3" dash plaques for each event. Winners usually got a gold or silver version to accompany the basic participation plaque given to all attendees. Events typically ended two hours or so later at a Pizza parlor. Places like Pizza Hut and Round Table were only too eager to cordon off a portion of the establishment for a crowd of people hungry for pizza and beer. In retrospect it is amazing to me that no one ever sued a club or a pizza place for any post event incidents. Perhaps that is one reason why those clubs don’t exist anymore. Sure, they were all incorporated, but in those days there was a climate of personal accountability for your actions. People didn’t rush to court to blame someone else for their own stupidity.
After I got out of the Army and went back to school, I continued to do car rallyes. By now it was 1969 and these events were rapidly disappearing. Maybe two more years or so and they were gone as the youth in the Bay area spent more energy on anti-war protests and smoking rope. Gutundfast (the early spelling) had a few rallyes of their own. Just club members and with a gimmick rallye format. Prizes were always the same. First place got a bottle of wine. No screw tops. Second place was a block of cheese. Third place was a loaf of bread. Fourth place always received an appropriate booby-prize. The finish would be at a park or a Santa Cruz beach. Picnic time! The photos below show one of those rallyes. In the first, Dale Merrithew (MGTF) runs a checkpoint as Julie Bursi and a friend (MGB) pull in. Behind the MG, Julie’s future boyfriend Larry also arrives, on a Honda 350! The second photo shows Scott Harris on the left (TR-3) giving the fourth place award (model of a 53 Chevy) to Jay and Meredith Tunis (Porsche 356B).
Years later, with kids of my own, I again found myself with a sports car and interested in recapturing some of those memories. And so, with my eldest son in tow, I repeated a ritual that my brother had done with me twenty five years before.
In 1990 the Oregon Region of PCA was holding a T&D rallye in the Sunnyside area of Portland. I do not have a trip computer nor am I an experienced T&D participant. On the other hand, my son Adam is a whiz at math and was equipped with his trusty programmable calculator. What I told him was all he had to do was figure the speed by mile in each section and keep me up on the next two instructions. I would worry about how fast or slow I was going and would adjust according to our error when we spot checked the mileage. What a plan! Low pressure, fun was the only objective.
Things began to unravel as we waited to start. When we got out of the parking lot, he had upgraded his program with so many enhancements that I began to get a little worried. Our first concern was the accuracy of the odometer. I know the 914 shows a little higher speed than actual (and I suspect this was done on purpose to make the owners feel justified in their purchase). As it happened, the error bar for our judgment was well within the error defined for the calibration leg. Our second concern became the computer program. When we did our first calibration, it worked OK. Unfortunately as we got further along it began to sound like Abbott and Costello in the cockpit.
ME: "OK, what is the next instruction and what is the target speed?"We gradually worked out a system for making corrections. God I love the kid, he was so troubled each time something came up wrong. I got to wondering why it was that he was so upset about the result. I thought back to those early rallyes that I ran with David. I remembered that I was so pumped to be doing stuff in the car and he was so pumped to show off his driving skills. Back then I was worried sick that he would be angry if I messed up. I now have little doubt that he really cared much about what I did at the time. Try as I might I could not keep Adam focused on having fun. Complicating all of this was the road itself. Sometimes it was really smooth. Most of the time we had no trouble with the traffic in front of us. On the other hand there were times when the road was so pockmarked with asphalt acne that I concluded the average speed was dreamed up by someone who owned an alignment shop.
ADAM: "Left first available, then right first available, target 35 MPH."
ME: "Coming up on two miles MARK!"
ADAM: "Something is wrong here, we’re averaging 9 MPH."
ME: "ABBBBOOTTTTTT!"
More and more often the numbers came out right. I kept telling Adam to just concentrate on the immediate instruction set and not to panic over what may or may not have happened. Then came the next blow. In my recollection this too was common to novice rallyists. Adam saw another car. Thank goodness it was going the same direction. If it had been in the oncoming lane, he’d have panicked for sure. As it was, the conversation went something like this:
ADAM: "There’s another car. We’re going too fast."Each time we got to a checkpoint he calibrated his watch. As if they had the atomic clock on Greenwich Mean Time or something. By the middle of the rallye he was starting to relax a little bit and was more comfortable with what we can call "incongruities". Although he was probably having fun all along, it didn’t show until this point. It was the calm before the storm. As we were jammin’ down the road on a particularly fast stretch, it seemed longer than usual since our last instruction. Since we were told the max distance between instructions at the start, I stole a glance at the odo. It wasn’t moving! Either panic was causing an optical illusion or it was some mechanical gremlin caused by the bumpy roads.
ME: "No sweat, maybe he is going to slow."
ADAM: "I’ll check my program. Give me a mileage check."
ME: "Don’t worry about someone else. What is the next instruction?"
ADAM: "I don’t understand it, it says we’re only 5 seconds ahead."
ME: "Don’t worry about it. What is the next instruction?"
ADAM: "Maybe if I reprogram from the start of the next leg"
ME: "ABBBBOOTTTTTT!"
ME: "Tell me again what the last instruction was."By the time we had turned around, and given the average speed for the leg, we had lost a ton. Poor Adam was beside himself. No sweat I told him, but he didn’t believe me. When we got to the finish, his shoulders were drooped beyond belief. My heartfelt thanks to the lady that collected the scoresheets. She told him that there were several adults that had not even filled out them out correctly. Aha! A moral victory.
ADAM: "Acute left at blue Newspaper Box."
ME: "I thought you said right at blinking red."
ADAM: "Acute left at blue Newspaper Box."
ME: "ABBBBOOTTTTTT!"
On the way home we had a good laugh. I know he feels better about it. He’s a perfectionist at heart though. I’m sure that time will mellow that. He has helped me set up a gimmick rallye since then. In the meantime, after all these years, I have hooked another sucker on the line. Adam will do well, maybe better than me.
"ABBBBOOTTTTTT!"
