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STAGE 11 , July 6
"Live from the lovely 'Round-Up
Room" at the Hotel Wilmont in Pocatello Idaho, the saxophone
quartet performs 'Moondance' for the enthralled crowd'.
Really, this town had a great crowd, including native dancers
in costume.
The weather continues to hold up nicely,
and it's not a factor in the rallying. We traveled a lot
of miles both north and west today, holding altitude through
6500' and driving around tall hills and valleys to the
plains where the chemicals and potatoes grow. Huge crowd
tonight, one of the largest we've ever seen.
The Rover continues to run perfectly, including
holding posted speeds on hills.
We tried a few things today: we reverted
back to a previous calibration, then made a small adjustment
after the calibration run. It looks like we hit this perfectly:
later in the day we came across a speedo check section
on the interstate, which worked out at 60 to 1:00:01, pretty
darned accurate. That helped a bunch.
The first 3 legs had long stretches at fairly
high speeds, 45-50. There were few maneuvers, except for
a short maze. Comparing scores to other teams we could
see we were running extremely well; as it turned out those
3 legs, including one of over 2 hours, were :01, :03, and
:01. Just about as good as you can get, and matched the
top running teams.
Another thing we tried was a different method
of calculating stop sign maneuvers, and on the 4th leg
we has 14 of those. We were :15 early. Clearly this method
doesn't work! We were so hopeful of a really good day:
all of our maneuvers were performed correctly, we missed
no signs and no turns. One second per maneuver is killer,
and we ended up with a :20, for 39th today. Many top teams
had a similar result but did better with age factor.
So, for tomorrow, we'll revise that technique
again and see if we can get it to work better.
It gets frustrating when the truck is doing
it's job, and we're hitting the marks, but one lousy second
per stop hits us that hard. We had a 'therapy session'
tonight, where a few teams meet for an adult beverage,
and compare horror stories. Basically we're doing about
as well as any team, making fewer course mistakes than
some, we just lack the age factor to improve the score.
We're doing so much that's right, we really wish the scores
reflected it. For example, we had two :01 second legs today.
It's just luck that they weren't Ace's, which pay $50 each,
but more importantly add those cute stickers to your car.
Well, more technique adjustments tomorrow
and we'll see what we can do. This is the last day before
the Grand Championship, where we can give it a go for a
class win. We should know what the Rover can do by then,
and if we have this last piece in place, who knows. We'll
sure give it a go anyway!
The way the race used to be run, you took
your best score through 12 stages, then added it to your
last two days. We'd be fine if we were still doing that,
and teams used that time to refine their performance. The
new scoring method requires top performance all the time,
and makes it hard to do really well with a new vehicle.
Oh well, that's the game, and we knew that going in.
Steve & Janet Hedke
Greatrace 45
Check out the size of these bulls: they are real and
live, brought to one of today's pit stops. Man, you'd
hate to run into one of these monsters in open range
country! They grow 'em big up here.
BP
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