Big Lap V
There's a strong desire to start this with, "Oh my god - FriedFarb didn't win." But that's really unfair to the overall winners, Mike Mazoway and Frank Beyer, who finished this 170 mile daylight event with 21 points scattered over 16 checkpoints.
Mike Friedman and Marc Goldfarb had 22; Andy English and Maryanne Rhodes took third, overall and in A, with 23 points. Had someone sneezed at a CAS change, the order could've been shuffled.
Scott Beliveau moved this, the fifth running, of the Big Lap further north this year, starting and finishing in Campton, NH. In past years, the Big Lap has conflicted with STPR, so Scott also moved it up by two weeks with the anticipation that more out of region rallyists would wander up for this NorthEast Divisional event.
Scott's reasoning for moving north was to find a cheaper hotel, but I don't believe him. I think he knew there were better roads up north (my brakes are still warm from coming down the mountain roads around lunch) with less traffic (we caught but one local for the whole day).
As to how we did ... well, it wasn't one of our prouder moments. I have always said you always trust your navigator, they know where you are in the space-time continuum. But what do you do when you have mixed signals coming from them?
Just before coming into checkpoint 11, brother Mike said we were 12 late. As I hopped out of the car, he held out the calculator which now said we were 38 late. Basic math says take the half minute TA, right? But then he says he's not sure if the current reading is correct.
Arghhh.
Mike says don't take the TA. My mind is locked on that 38 late. I take the TA. Now we're 39 early and, since it's our second TA, it's doubled to 78. Without it, we would have had an 11. Checkpoint worker David Lewis duly chastises me.
TRUST YOUR NAVIGATOR!
Leg 3 was our other anomaly, with a 56. The 24 on leg 16 is from a missed pause, we think, as was the 12 on leg 17. Everything else is a single digit for the day totaling up to 229. Good for third in class and ninth overall. Maybe good isn't the right word for it.
One thing Scott tried this year to help the novices was a re-zero after each manned checkpoint. The idea being to alleviate the problem of massive odometer drift. For experienced teams, this makes little difference. For the novices, lunch now comes at the right mileage, not three or four miles in either direction.
One catch, though: Scott used a lot of delta mileages and, occasionally, those deltas were from a re-zero. You knew this was a possibility, and of course some folks complained about them, but it was also a pretty good tip-off as to where at least two controls were. I blew both of them, once trying to take a left into a driveway because the next NRI had a delta of 0.04, then seeing the checkpoint 100 yards down the road. Neat way to help the novices and keep the experienced crews on their toes.
Top honors in B go to Stephanie Gosselin and dad Fred Mapplebeck with a total of 47. C honors go to Steve Novatne and Brian Mullaney at 175. The four novice teams were led by Richard Macchi and Nicholas Shectman who edged out John Riter and Linda Riter, 331 to 335.
Thanks again to Scott and all of his workers. A class act.
-mej
Pyrrhic Rally Team