<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0On October 19, 2018, my wife and I were on the way to Houghton in the late afternoon when we happened to notice one of the cars from the Lake Superior Performance Rally (LSPR) traveling in the other direction.\u00a0 They were headed toward the Friday evening starting point of their weekend rally.\u00a0 Just for fun, we started counting the cars that went by (they were hard to miss with tons of sponsor logos and rally lights festooning their colorfully painted buggies).\u00a0 In a stretch of no more than twenty miles, we saw 53 of the 56 cars entered in the rally.\u00a0 The LSPR was the eighth and final event of Rally America\u2019s 2018 season.\u00a0 The forecast calling for cold temps and snow meant the rally teams were going to get exactly what they were seeking:\u00a0 challenging conditions on the backwoods U.P. roads they would be navigating.\u00a0 Note the purposeful use of the word \u2018navigating\u2019 because a rally is not a \u2018race.\u2019\u00a0 A road rally is defined by Wikipedia as, \u201cA car rally that takes place on the public roads.\u00a0 It is a popular sport in the United Kingdom, especially Wales.\u00a0 Competitors travel over a predetermined course against the clock.\u00a0 There is no direct head to head racing. The driver and navigator team up to follow the course in a predetermined amount of time.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The \u2018public roads\u2019 making up the LSPR can range from paved to primitive.\u00a0 Some years earlier,\u00a0 my wife and I had another close encounter with this car rally somewhere between Baraga and Greenland.\u00a0 In this case, the rally entered the highway somewhere behind us.\u00a0 All the rally and support cars passed us before they turned north and disappeared on a gravel road.\u00a0 It was just our luck to be in the middle of the ten mile stretch of blacktop that connected one segment of the rally\u2019s backwoods route to the next.\u00a0 In that twilight period of the day, we were traveling below the posted speed limit so the entire rally passed us by like we were going backwards.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Back in his college days, my brother Ron was a charter member of the Lake Superior Sportscar Club (LSSC) in Marquette, MI.\u00a0 My buddy Jim and I weren\u2019t even old enough to take Driver Education when we joined the club as associate members.\u00a0 Why would a sportscar club have associate members who weren\u2019t old enough to drive?\u00a0 Without extra bodies to help out at club sponsored events, all the \u2018real\u2019 members would end up working instead of taking part.\u00a0 In other words, we were the group\u2019s built in volunteers.\u00a0 Not only did we get to \u2018work\u2019 at the events, we got to tag along to the planning meetings and believe me, it took more than a little time to mount a successful event.\u00a0 \u2018Planning meetings\u2019 usually included food, so we were all in.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0One of the first events Jim and I helped with was a closed course performance trial.\u00a0 The LSSC was granted permission to use the Marquette Senior High School parking lot on a Saturday afternoon.\u00a0 The staging area was located on the north end of the parking lot along Fair Avenue.\u00a0 There were three other points of entry to this large parking area so traffic cones, barriers, signs, and one of the Associate Members were posted at each one to keep out unwanted traffic.\u00a0 The closed course was basically a slalom course of traffic cones run against the clock.\u00a0 Each driver would navigate the course with points being deducted for any cones they killed.\u00a0 The fastest time with the lowest \u2018cones killed\u2019 score took home the biggest trophy.\u00a0 Ron\u2019s sage advice was, \u201cIf someone spins out or heads your way, run like heck.\u201d\u00a0 For our efforts, we got to hear a lot of squealing tires and went home with a free event sticker.\u00a0 For my time spent in the club, I collected a fair assortment of plastic badges and stickers that were still attached to my old bookcase when the folks moved out of our Summit Street homestead in 2012.\u00a0 Closed course events were fun to work at, but not nearly as fun as setting up road rally courses.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0A road rally covers a lot more ground than a closed course trial.\u00a0 A driver and navigator are given a set of instructions telling them where to go, how far it is between checkpoints, and the approximate average speed they were expected to maintain.\u00a0 In order for a rally team to get a set of detailed instructions, someone had to go out and map the route.\u00a0 Once it was mapped, there had to be a trial run so the directions, distances, and average speeds could be double checked.\u00a0 This was the fun part for me because we got to see places around Marquette County that very few people would visit unless they owned a camp or liked to hunt in those areas.\u00a0 The one essential rule said that \u201cthou shall not speed.\u201d\u00a0 These rallys took place on public roads and no one wanted to risk injuring a civilian.\u00a0 The average speeds were planned so drivers would be able to make up for lost time without excess speed if the team got turned around.\u00a0 A team might have to slow down or pick up the pace some to get their average speed and time right.\u00a0 When a team arrived at a checkpoint too early, they would sometimes slow to a snail\u2019s pace to try and adjust their average speed.\u00a0 Crawling along in sight of a checkpoint always led to a merciless (but good humoured) ribbing.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The biggest road rally I remember from those days was called Moonlight Madness.\u00a0 When we were setting it up, I had no idea that there were towns in the southern part of the county called Ralph and Arnold.\u00a0 The best description I can give you is this:\u00a0 Ralph and Arnold are located in the vicinity of Felch.\u00a0 Not much help?\u00a0 I went to high school with a girl named Dee who would\u00a0 correct my description of her old stomping grounds.\u00a0 Dee\u2019s family had roots in that area and she would remind me that, \u201cRalph, Arnold, and Felch are all suburbs of Felch Mountain.\u201d\u00a0 This would be akin to saying \u201cMass City, Greenland, and Rousseau are suburbs of East Branch.\u201d\u00a0 Any way you cut it, these hamlets are off the beaten track and relatively unknown unless you had a reason to visit them.\u00a0 We also used to tell Dee she could only know about these remote locations because she was obviously the lone survivor of some lost Felch Mountain commune.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When we were doing the route scouting for one of the Moonlight Madness rallies (there had been a couple of previous versions over the years), I finally had my learner\u2019s permit.\u00a0 Ron had me drive so he could take notes on the mileage between checkpoints and changes needed in the written directions the navigators would follow.\u00a0 Ron would tell me to keep a certain speed so he could get a rough idea of the travel time between reference points on his map.\u00a0 We had a standard Chevrolet half ton pick up at that time and I was still new to the logistics of downshifting from highway speed to country road speed.\u00a0 Ron was looking down at his map and said, \u201cYou will need to turn right off the pavement at the next corner,\u201d without realizing that \u201cthe next corner\u201d was directly in front of us.\u00a0 I braked hard, turned the wheel to the right and ended up with Jim (who was riding in the center position) and Ron (riding shotgun) sliding my way and pinning me up against the door.\u00a0 Thank goodness for door locks!\u00a0 There was a lot of gravel on the pavement, so by the time we came to a skidding stop, we were sitting in a cloud as dust drifted through the cab (we had the windows open – no AC in trucks back then).\u00a0 After Ron chewed me out for not slowing down enough before making the turn (and I accused him of not paying attention to where we were when he said \u201cturn here\u201d),\u00a0 we went back to work.\u00a0 Forty miles of twists, turns, logging roads, two rut roads, and creek crossings later, we emerged on the same paved road no more than ten miles from where we had left it.\u00a0 \u201cThat will be a fun stage,\u201d was Ron\u2019s assessment.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Once finalized, a rally contains a series of stages that begin and end at check points spread all over the county.\u00a0 On rally day, my job was to team up with an older volunteer and man a checkpoint for an alloted period of time.\u00a0 If all the cars hadn\u2019t passed us by a certain ending time, we figured they were lost and wouldn\u2019t be needing us to punch their checkpoint card to win that stage.\u00a0 I can\u2019t say that I understood exactly how the stages were scored to determine the overall winner, but we could usually tell who was in the running.\u00a0 The lack of questions a team asked when they got to our check point usually meant they knew where they were and where they were going.\u00a0 Teams that asked a lot of questions were not going to place in the money.\u00a0 If they thought they may have missed a checkpoint along the way, all we could say was, \u201cThis is checkpoint six.\u00a0 Didn\u2019t you check in at five?\u201d The most frequently asked questions were, \u201cAre we the first car here?\u201d and \u201cHow long ago did the first car leave here?\u201d\u00a0 Occasionally, a car would drive into a checkpoint from the wrong direction and try to tell us that we were in the wrong spot.\u00a0 How they found us by traveling the rally route backwards was always a question for the ages.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The last Moonlight Madness rally we worked on found Jim and I helping set up the southernmost checkpoint.\u00a0 I mentioned Ralph and Arnold specifically because the checkpoint we manned was actually set up at the entrance to the dump between those two burgs.\u00a0 \u201cDump\u201d here signifies to old fashioned Upper Peninsula \u2018trenched trash pile in the woods\u2019 kind of dump and not the modern day \u201clandfill\u201d type.\u00a0 This is significant in that the old fashioned dumps were the equivalent of \u2018bear buffets.\u2019\u00a0 We were set up just after dusk and didn\u2019t break the check point down until nearly 2:00 AM, which of course, is prime bear dining time.\u00a0 If you have ever gone to watch the bears forage at one of these dumps, then you know we had our heads on a swivel all night long.\u00a0 No self respecting wild bear would have put up with all the traffic once the cars started rolling in, but then again, dump bears seemed to gain a little too much tolerance of human activity when there are easy pickings to be had.\u00a0 We did not find it especially helpful when the rally teams departed with a cheery, \u201cWatch out for the bears!\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0One of my favorite rally participants was named Clyde.\u00a0 Clyde ended up being the supervisor of the Cartography Lab in the NMU Geography Department when I was a college freshman. \u00a0 I didn\u2019t get to know that version of Clyde until a few years after the last Moonlight Madness.\u00a0 The \u2018MM Clyde\u2019 was the guy who did the entire rally by himself…riding a motorcycle.\u00a0 He managed this feat of driving and self-navigation by taping the rally instructions to his gas tank while holding a flashlight in his mouth.\u00a0 When he got to the bottom of a page, he would rip the sheet off and stuff it into his leather jacket.\u00a0 By the time he hit our Ralph and Arnold checkpoint, Clyde, his bike, and his current instruction page were a muddy mess.\u00a0 He may not have won the rally, but they had to give him a trophy just for completing the whole route solo – the one and only entrant in the motorcycle division.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0If one considers some of the two rut tracks that some of these rallys covered, it amazes me that no one did any serious damage to their vehicles (that I remember).\u00a0 There was one instance where a driver put his car in the ditch, but that was a mechanical failure on US 41 between Marquette and Negaunee (a four lane divided highway and not a two rut road).\u00a0 The reason this one mishap sticks in my head?\u00a0 When this team finally came in to the last checkpoint, the car didn\u2019t have the customary shoe polish number painted on the driver\u2019s side window.\u00a0 They avoided being DQ’d when the driver explained:\u00a0 \u201cWe didn\u2019t dare tell the police we were involved in a road rally because I wasn\u2019t sure my insurance company would cover the tow truck.\u201d\u00a0 His description of feverishly scraping the number off his window before the police arrived to fill out the paperwork was funny, but only after it was clear that he and his navigator were not injured.\u00a0 Had the wrecker\u00a0 pulled them out of the ditch a little sooner and their minor repair had gone a little quicker, they might still have picked up a trophy.\u00a0 They really should have been awarded a plaque for comic relief, because this tale was the highlight of the rally postmortem.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When my wife and I were dating, we went mudding with our friend Dan to the end of the Keweenaw Peninsula.\u00a0 Dan was taking a couple of buisness courses at MTU and owned a jacked up four wheel drive pick up.\u00a0 Dan belonged to a group that would explore the backroads on weekends.\u00a0 We were making our way to the tip of the peninsula when I remarked that the road we were on would make a good route for a rally.\u00a0 Dan expressed some doubt and just said, \u201cYou\u2019ll see,\u201d when I questioned why he didn\u2019t think the route would be suitable.\u00a0 Some miles later, we came to a rather large beaver dam to our left.\u00a0 The pond it formed flooded the track ahead.\u00a0 Dan eased the truck through the water covering the road.\u00a0 Half way across, the water was breaking across the hood like the inverted prow of a ship.\u00a0 Dan said, \u201cWe were here in the spring and the water wasn\u2019t much higher, but we had chunks of ice flowing over the hood like icebergs.\u201d\u00a0 Okay, using this particular route would not be great for a car rally.\u00a0 The rally cars my wife and I saw on the road to Houghton in 2018 would have needed snorkels to traverse a pond this deep.\u00a0 Poor Clyde would have needed a wetsuit and a snorkel!<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The trend these days finds more and more people venturing into the wilds with side-by-sides that have grown larger over the years.\u00a0 Certainly, these buggies would be ideal for backwoods rallies and I am sure that such events already exist.\u00a0 Mudding with a vehicle equipped for that kind of outing is pretty common these days.\u00a0 Just the same, the rallies I got to experience were run with regular, over the road vehicles.\u00a0 The \u2018scavenger hunt\u2019 nature of finding far flung check points was half the fun.\u00a0 Surviving the muddy stretches with a \u2018normal\u2019 vehicle was sometimes miraculous.\u00a0 I never rode a rally route as a driver or navigator, but it always struck me that I got to see a lot more than the participants.\u00a0 The rallies I worked on were all run at night so seeing the routes during the daytime planning and shakedown drives was far more interesting for me.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Top Piece Video – NOT a good rally song because Sammy\u00a0Can’t Drive 55<\/em> – and a very young Sammy Hagar from the days when videos sold music!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0On October 19, 2018, my wife and I were on the way to Houghton in the late afternoon when we happened to notice one of the cars from the Lake Superior Performance Rally (LSPR) traveling in the other direction.\u00a0 They were headed toward the Friday evening starting point of their weekend rally.\u00a0 Just for 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