In the fall of 1991, I ran my first road rally with my high school mentor, Vern Robertson. He’d told me tails of comic adventure for years and he launched me into a quarter century of wandering the backroads of America.
When I moved to Georgia 12 years ago, there weren’t any events of note down here. I drove or flew north a few times a year to compete with my partner Frank Beyer, but as kids grew and life complicated itself, those events spread out more. We went more than three years between rallies.
I needed to do something, so last fall I approached the Atlanta Region of the Sports Car Club of America to ask about organizing an event. The response was overwhelmingly positive, especially since there hadn’t been an SCCA event in Georgia in more than two decades.
On the first day of April, under crystal clear skies and warm temperatures, 30 teams showed up in Athens and then wandered a 100 mile route.
Almost all were novices, so I didn’t to a traditional time-speed-distance event. There were a few timing segmentes, but it was mostly a question and answer run. Which did turn out to be much harder than I had expected … but everyone was laughing at the end, everyone seemed to have a good time.
More to come …
Hopefully you created a new crop of ralliests. As you well know, all it takes is one event to light the fire.
We had 30 teams start and only three or four had any experience, some of which dated to the late 1960s. Getting questions about when the next one will be.