What a wuss!
Oh, now you’re gonna pretend you didn’t see this and click on to the
next page--so typical. You could be a rally master. It’s not like
rally masters live on top of mountains growing white beards or fly
around in spaceships. Rally masters are, unfortunately, commodities
in short supply.
Is this the laying on of a guilt trip? Nah. You could be a rally
master, like you could’ve been a doctor, but the latter issue is
between you and your mother. In road rallying, people seem to have
gotten the impression that they have to be ‘chosen’ or ‘special’ to
write a rally. Nothing could be further from the truth. Unlike card
games, where the convention is that all of the players get a chance
to deal, most clubs don’t require people to write rallies. They
usually hope for somebody to step up to the task. More frequently,
they have the same people writing the rallies, and while they have
fun, they get burned out after doing two or three events in a
season.
To quote an ancient television commercial: “Try it, you’ll like it.”
Being a rally master is like running a rally while knowing all of
the answers. People will even like you.*
The thing that seems to put most people off from writing a rally is
the trouble; the staring at a map until blood starts to ooze from
one’s forehead. Then there’re the traps (if any), the checkpoints,
the measurements, the calculations, the this and the that—Agh!
Not so fast Grasshopper, it’s not that hard. Really.
The first step in the whole process is deciding upon what kind of
rally to do. Trap rallies, monte carlos (tours) and gimmick events
are the main favorites.
Gimmicks, pooh-poohed upon by some, are about as free-style and
stress free as rallies come. Some gimmick rallies can be
challenging, such as fox-and-hares or are simply landmark hunts.
Competitors invariably have great fun in them.
Monte carlos, the so-called “zero hero” events are a little more
technical in that the course must be critically measured and the TSD
calculations triple-checked. The route instructions use alpines or
tulips (there is a difference), which are schematic drawings of
street intersections. While there are no traps in a monte, a mistake
by the competitor in either calculation or execution of an
instruction is what separates the winners from the rest.
Trap rallies are the things that scare most neophyte rally masters.
Technically, the NWRC Friday Nighter series falls under this
category, but it isn’t unusual to have a trap-less event. Trap
rallies are similar to monte carlos insofar as calculations and
timing are concerned. A simple definition of a “trap” is the process
whereby the rally master can make the competitor misinterpret a
route instruction. Traps can be simple or hellish all depending upon
the rally master’s disposition and conscience. In truth, there are
some rally masters who’ll be in Purgatory a lo-o-ong time.
Once a route concept is in mind, check in with your club. There’s
always a lot of experienced people who will help with the writing,
organizing and ultimately, execution of the event. That’s what
everybody’s there for. The club wants that rally to be successful,
so everybody will have fun, competitors and organizers alike.
There are also, of course, the toys. Ah, yes, the toys. First and
foremost is the standard PC computer (or Mac for you smug sorts).
These days most computers have programs like Word and Excel that
make writing rallies and doing calculations easy. There are also
various makes of road measuring equipment that are so cool to futz
with. Sure, some of that stuff is pricey, but that’s what the club
is for. Somebody’s already got some of that equipment and is keen on
using it. The list of goodies grows from there, but you get the
general idea.
And that’s how it basically works! True, researching and writing a
rally will take up the ol’ spare time, but then, so does mowing the
lawn. On the other hand, some of your fellow club members probably
wouldn’t mind helping you because they’re not crazy about doing yard
work either.
Hopefully, I’ve put the job of rally master into a different light
and, perhaps taken some of the dread out of it. If you can go
grocery shopping, you can be a rally master. All it takes is a
little organization, some help from your friends and you can end up
with a fine road rally. Really!
Oh, yeah. Don’t forget the grocery list when you go out. If ya do,
your mother’ll kill ya.
* My mother.
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