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Blue Ridge Mountain Sports Car Club

Presents:

Clueless 5:

Where the Wild Things Are

When: Sunday, June 6th, 2010.

Start:  We’ll be starting in the rear parking lot of the Washington Crown Center (Mall) in Washington, PA. Latitude: 40°9’25.6” Longitude: 80°16’31.3” Via flashearth.

Directions to get there:

    Follow I-70 to Exit 15.

    At the end of either ramp, go straight/right on US Route 40 E (Chestnut St).

    Go right at the light at the Consol Energy Park sign (on North Ring Road).

    Follow Ring Road around the mall to the back.

    We will be near Trich Dr.

            Note that Google maps doesn’t know about Trich Dr,

            try Yahoo maps or the above Flashearth link.

Registration:  Registration is at 1:00 PM with the First Car Off (FCO) at 2:01PM.

Cost: For those entering as Steel Cities Region members or guests, points earned on this event will count towards the SCCA National Championship as a Regional GTA. Cost is $15.00, plus $5.00 for a weekend membership if not already an SCCA member. BRMSCC members can run for BRMSCC points only for $10.00.

Description:  

As part of the Steel Cities Region, SCCA Spring Fling on Sunday June 6, 2010, join SCR and the Blue Ridge Mountain Sports Car Club for the fifth running of the Clueless Road Rally series. Headquarters for the event will be near Consol Energy Park, Washington, Pennsylvania, home of the Wild Things baseball team. Following the event contestants are invited to join SCR at a picnic and baseball game.

There is no timing for this GTA (gimmick) road rally. Rallymasters Rick & Laura Beattie have again opened the archives of the BRMSCC’s favorite inspector, Bernard McQuaide, as he looks for the wild things. Contestants will follow three routes that begin and end at Consol Energy Park and use signs along the way to fill in the answers to questions in the instructions.

Please join SCR for the picnic at 5:00 PM and baseball game at 6:35 PM. It’s Family Fun Day as the Wild Things play the River City Rascals. Kids 12 and under can run the bases after the game. The 2009 Wild Things were W43 L53 pct .448. The Pirates at W62 L99 pct .384 lost more games than the Wild Things played. 

Food includes hot dogs, hamburgers, chicken, potato salad…. Well, you get the idea. Cost is $22 per person for all you can eat and seats for the game. For more information, go to the Steel Cities website http://www.steelcities-scca.org/ or download the form at http://www.steelcities-scca.org/Brochures/WashingtonWildThingsPicnic.pdf . The form must be received before May 24, 2010.

Contact Rick Beattie at RLBArchitect -at gmail.com with questions.

What beginners should bring with them:

For starters - there should be two of you in the car: a driver, and a navigator (who isn't inclined to get car-sick reading while moving, or has an antidote for it).

Bring a mechanically sound car* that has a tenths -reading odometer (a resettable trip odometer can be a help), a clipboard, a four function calculator, several working pens, a set of highlighters (for marking up the route instructions) and post-it notes. 

If you can choose between a mechanical odometer that "rolls" and a digital display, the mechanical will enable you to interpolate to the hundredths. If you only have the digital tenths, then you'll have to do a lot more "guessing" in between the numbers clicking over. We have folks who have gotten good at this with practice!

While every team has their own procedure, it's useful to be able to highlight things like speed changes, and free zones (remember - there is a tutorial to get you started!) so that "on the road" it helps you remember them better.  The post-its are to stick on your dashboard to remind the driver of the assigned speeds and what the active course following priorities are. 

Also - having a good map of the area that includes secondary (and tertiary roads) can be very helpful if you get lost and can't regain the rally course.

*While a cell phone and a AAA membership can't hurt, a lot of the time, we'll be traveling on roads that are well off the beaten track, and you may not have much of a description of where you are!  "Well - we got here by turning left after "Snodgrass", then right at T, and left by protection... "  While a GPS unit probably won’t help you very much while running the rally, it may be very useful for telling AAA where you are if you break down.