2007 Columbia Gorge Classic Rally & Tour

“Thank you so much for an amazing event.  I haven't had that much fun in years!”

That comment was typical of the response to the 14th edition of the club’s premier annual event, the Columbia Gorge Classic Rally & Tour, held on June 23, 2007.  It was a great “rally day,” and here are the highlights from the perspective of the Rally Master, the overall event chair.

The event actually began the day before, on Friday, June 22, with a social gathering at the Raccoon Lodge & Brew Pub in Raleigh Hills, Oregon.  Here the entrants picked up their event shirts, event posters (a “first” for the 2007 event), their event programs (another “first”), their “goodie bags” (yet another “first”), and their car number placards (still yet another “first”), all made possible by our ten sponsors (yes, another “first”).  This event was really taken to the next level in 2007.

We also had high-quality golf shirts and hats, all with the event logo and club name embroidered, available for sale.  That was another first, and many thanks to club member Rich Medcraft of Stitchwise Embroidery for producing these terrific items at a cost that allowed us to sell them at reasonable prices and make a few bucks in the process, helping to offset some of the costs of putting on the event.

The next day we all met at Lewis & Clark State Park near Troutdale, where Rally Manager Ron Hillbury had arranged breakfast, and shortly after that we had the Drivers’ Meeting just before striking out on the beautiful roads of eastern Multnomah and Clackamas Counties.  The initial section of the rally, the Odometer Check Section, took everyone to Barton Park where the competitive portion of the rally began, and where we also returned for lunch and the after-rally awards, all arranged by Ron and crew.

This year, in addition to being a great drive on some great roads, as Rally Master I added a couple of “special features” that no one in the rally knew about ahead of time.

The first of these special features was encountered late in the morning when the rallyists were eastbound on Squaw Mountain Road headed up into the Cascade Mountains, and they came upon a checkpoint that may be unique in the history of rallying: instead of seeing the usual checkpoint signboard with event workers sitting in folding chairs nearby, the rallyists were confronted by a British Ferret armored car and a USMC Jeep forming a military checkpoint.  In fact, members of the Military Vehicles Collectors Club (MVCC) were recruited to staff this surprise feature of the event.  There were also regular event workers present nearby, and the cars were timed as they arrived and then given instructions that they had arrived at the border of the “Peoples’ Democratic Republic of Rally-stan,” which was closed for the day for their annual coup d’état.  Rallyists were then sent back down the hill towards lunch, where many of them reported needing a break to steady their nerves after encountering that checkpoint!  It must have been the plastic rifles they saw there.

But wait, there’s more.

After lunch we had my personal favorite feature of the rally: our very own radar trap, giving a whole new meaning to the term, “trap rally.”  I wrote a “Free Zone” into a TSD section, and if you understand rallying you know that you are not timed in a Free Zone, but you must get to the end of it by an assigned time.  I constructed the rally so that rallyists would be just a tiny bit pressed for time in this section, thereby setting the stage for “speeds above normal.”  Well, sure enough, almost everyone took the bait, zipping along a farm road northwest of the town of Liberal, and after cresting a slight rise they spotted Officer Dave Houck as he leveled his radar gun at them.  Officer Dave’s car is a fully restored, and fully authentic, 1969 Plymouth Belvedere police cruiser, formerly of the Portland Police Department.  It has its original markings and red and blue lights, and Officer Dave is an actual retired Portland City Police Officer.  Dave could have given out a whole month’s quota of tickets that day, although as we all know, police don’t have quotas – they can give out as many tickets as they want.

Well, despite the vintage of the police car, you can imagine the first thoughts of the rallyists as they spotted a police officer, standing next to a police car, pointing a radar gun at them.  And on top of that, their actual speeds were recorded and an award was presented to Tom Ekstrand and Estelle Bollinger for being in the first car (of very few cars) that went through the radar trap at the legal limit of 55 MPH.  We couldn’t present trophies to cars exceeding the speed limit, because that would be contrary to the spirit of rallying (everything is conducted at or below the posted limits).  What’s more, with as many people as there were who were driving “briskly,” the cost of trophies to recognize them all would have cleaned out the club’s bank account.  Suffice to say that it was reward enough when they realized that they were not going to be ticketed.

No report on the rally would be complete without mention of the winners.  All of the placements are shown in the accompanying table, but finishing First in the Standard Class were Dave Beach and his daughter Jessica, in Dave’s Alfa Romeo Sprint.  This was a particularly special win for Dave and Jessica because it was also the last event they would do together before Jessica’s upcoming marriage.  Seems like the final father-daughter weekend together, before her marriage, was quite a success.

MGs snagged the next two spots as member Jeff Zurschmeide and well-known Portland area rallyist Kevin Poirier took second in Jeff’s MGA, which was formerly owned by his father, and Rob Daigle and Dave Reich brought a borrowed MGB-GT home for Third.

The top spot in the Novice Class also went to an MGB-GT, crewed by Dave and Barbara Shively, and Fourth and Fifth in Novice also went to MGs: Jim and Peggy Oliver were Fourth in their MGB, and Don Rhodes and Jon Meyer in a Midget brought home the Fifth place trophy. 

All in all, this was a complicated rally to prepare and organize, and it could not have been pulled off without a lot of help from a lot of course workers.  Those workers were:

Thanks team – you were flawless!

I also mentioned that we had sponsors for the first time this year, and they also certainly deserve another mention.  They were:

We were very gratified to make it to our goal of 75 registrations, actually reaching the cut-off.  I believe that this is the most registrations ever in the 14 years of the event, and we’re looking forward to meeting the same goal again next time.  Since there was so much positive feeling about the event, we also believe that registration will fill up earlier next time as the word continues to spread, so please, do not delay entering this premier event: the 15th Annual Columbia Gorge Classic Rally & Tour, scheduled for June 21, 2008.

Registration is now open, and if you enter the 2008 rally, you too can be saying, “…an amazing event.  I haven't had that much fun in years!”

2007 RESULTS

STANDARD CLASS

 NOVICE CLASS