CANADA!
For the last week, I drove up to Ottawa for a work trip. It was very scenic and the GTI is a pleasant and comfortable distance car.
Oh, and metric system looks faster (though Canada's roads have pretty low speed limits, even out in the middle of nowhere, and huge fines.
So, that was fun. But more fun, it turned out Tall Pines Rally (a CRC event) was happening right after my work trip ended, and since I drove there I decided to go 2 hours further to crew for Kevin Brolin and Dan Downey's e30. Ian from Ottawa (who has an e30 rally car) joined me for the trip and crewing as well and we headed out to Bancroft uneventfully.
Upon arriving, Dan and Kevin were on recce, so we grabbed the car and took it to recce. Now....this is Kevin's car, which is very new to stage rally (this rally last year was its first). And I guess it's a bit more put together than Dan's - but these guys spend more time actually RACING and less time like me sitting in my garage doing little projects on the car. Car is fully functional and safe, but plenty of haphazard switch mounting and stuff. It works for them, but that stuff would drive me crazy hahah.....
Anyhow, jumped in with 12 layers of clothes on (it was like 15 degrees at the time) and we rolled to tech
Tech was mostly uneventful. We had to do a few small things and the inspectors had some questions, but passed nonetheless. I'll mention here that EVERYONE in Canada is apparently very friendly, even tech inspectors. They looked closely at the car, but always were chit-chatting and telling rally stories and smiling. Not really what you get in the US haha...
Little side story - that Volvo 142 apparently was driven in the early 70s to some kind of Finnish rally championship by Markku "Maximum Attack" Alen (yeah, he coined the phrase "Max Attack"), one of the greatest rally drivers ever, and still has his name on the hood. For a long time it was in some kind of private museum collection, and then at some point Charles Hammer (who has been rallying for 40 years), bought it from the museum in Finland, shipped it over to Canada, and started rallying it again. A gorgeous car, still with a cage that looks like it hasn't been updated since 1973, but whatever. Really awesome...
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Also there, "Crazy Leo" Urlichich, who I've read many stories about, and seen many youtube videos of doing epic things, but damn, he's also VERY fast on stage. And apparently during transits he was live-streaming and telling stories of sexual exploits with his girlfriends (who was sitting next to him as his codriver). Or so I heard. Anyhow, can't miss his car...
So, we stayed at a little house next to a Tim Horton's ... it was still cold
Kev and Dan finished their notes...
Next morning, they were off.
One of the few RWD cars there aside from the Volvo, an RX7, and a formerly Toyota-sponsored FRS drift car.
The RX7 had intermittent engine isssues, as it did at STPR as well. The FR-S, looked awesome entering corners:
But later in the rally rolled and got a bit messed up.
The Subies were all busy ditch-dipping...
Kev and Dan were going nice and clean, keeping it tidy, but then slid off and got caught up on some logs. Had to wait a while for a guy with a chainsaw to cut them out and winch them back on stage, and then they re-entered.
Tis but a flesh wound. We took some crowbars and hammers and bent it back into "functional" shape...
And finished.....got on the 2WD podium as well, though in this event there were seemingly like 20 podiums for various classes and series....
Right next to some more of our friends from down this way, Burke and Werner, who were some of the first rally guys we met years ago at Black River Stages, so great to see them on the podium as well.
Celebrations were had, stuff loaded up, etc...
All in all, a fun rally full of polite Canadians and a lot of time spent huddling in the GTI trying to get warm!
Next morning I headed out into the cold morning Ontario sun..
And was still driving into the not as cold evening New York sun...
I did swing by Rochester to visit some family and dropped in on fellow old-German-car rallyist Tony Zanni at his print shop (which was super cool as well).
We compared 'Dubs...
So yeah, over 1600 total miles driven over a week (most of it in the first and last days), got to see a cool city (this time in winter) and go to a Canadian rally, and drink a few dozen Tim Horton's coffees, etc etc. Good times.