I couldn't find any more suitable forum to post this, so I'm putting it here, as this is the forum that I live in when I'm here, lol.

Jesus, where do I begin…? Having been home for 3 days now, the past week is still a blur and life feels as if it has moved to a gridlocked-traffic pace. I wake up every morning waiting for someone to hand me a checkpoint card as we go tearing out of some quaint town in the middle USA, kicking up dust that hasn’t been disturbed in 100 years. Local townsfolk and media people watching jaw-dropped and in awe as 100,000 hp tears up the pavement in their quiet city, like something straight out of the book of revelations… I have a condition at this time know as PRD – Post Rally Depression; I’m sad, and the only cure is another rally. And there is another one coming up, so there is hope for me… But let’s go back, waaay back…..

Years ago, a buddy and I used to put on charity road rallies, which eventually turned into street races, which eventually led to us valuing keeping our homes more than putting on rallies, so we shut them down. In the time we were doing those rallies, we met 2 amazing people (well 100’s of amazing people, but these 2 make it all happen) Scott Spielman and Tony Intrieri. We stopped doing our rallies, and they started doing theirs… thank God. These two guys run an organization called Rally North America (RNA). http://www.rallynorthamerica.com - https://www.facebook.com/RallyNorthAmerica - RNA organizes and hosts cross country and local road rallies to benefit charities. Sounds like every other road rally you’ve heard of right? Nope. 100% of every dime raised by the organization and teams in the events goes to the charity. Not 10% or 15% or 50%, EVERY GODDAM DIME. This includes sponsorship money and cash raised by the teams. The benefiting charity for this Rt. 50 event was The Accelerated Cure Project for MS. We raised a total of $110,000 with this rally…. Not too shabby for a bunch of gearheads driving across the country like idiots.

My first event with RNA was their main summer event last year dubbed The Rally New England. We went from Ithaca, NY and in 3 days ended up in St. Johns, New Brunswick, Canada. I was hooked. And when I say hooked I mean hooked like a meth-junkie killing a family of 4 to get $12 for his next score. We took a very ideal rally car on that event… 2008 V10 Audi S6… Comfort, *****, etc. Took home a 1st place trophy on Day 2. A great friend Mike Martin was my navigator on this event, and we was amazing. Calm and collected, and on-point with the correct route every time. Here’s a couple shots of our livery from that event…

 

We followed this one up by doing the 2 day event the following October called the Ohio Valley 700 where we did a jaunt from Centerville, OH to the French Lick hotel and casino, and then back the next day. We took a classic 21 year old Twin Turbo 300ZX on this event, and did most of the drive with a failed master cylinder, so no clutch disengagement (and a righteous hangover)… and still placed 2nd on Day 1 and 1st on Day 2. Brought on Dan Kinzie (DK) to navigate for this event and he stayed on for the event’s following as well. He is Team Champagne’s golden ticket navigator… He is AMAZING. Here’s the livery from that event.





Now for some background and stats on this most recent event… This Rt 50 Rally is RNA’s 5th year putting on events, and this is the longest they have done. A 5 day event, driving from Martinsburg, WV all the way to Pueblo, CO with a track day the day before at Summit Point Raceway and drivers meeting that night. So, let’s call it 6 days, plus however long it takes you to get back home after the event…. We were gone a total of 10 days. Best 10 day trip I have ever taken, or ever will again. I’ve done a lot of driving events, both on and off road… Tons of track days, short TSD rallies, competed in Top Truck Challenge twice, raced in the King of the Hammers, Baja 1000, Vegas to Reno 500, tons of PDE stuff in tons of exotics…. And I have to say that you cannot have more fun behind the wheel of a vehicle than you will have on a RNA rally. I’m not some ***** ***** jaded mother ****er either, I like excitement…. and RNA always delivers. These events are laid out somewhat scavenger hunt style, with teams being required to hit about a half dozen sites per day before getting to the finish line. Times are logged and the team that produces the shortest time with hitting all checkpoints is the winner for that day, and each day awards 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place. But, it’s not a race, and driving fast doesn’t seem to help a lot. What does help is having a top notch navigator that can find your checkpoints and map you to them. They don’t make it easy, in fact they make it insanely difficult. An extensive amount of image searching, google searching, coordinate mapping, etc is needed to find an actual address of each checkpoint.

So, call it a test of navigation and proper mapping… therefore a solid navigator is clutch, and will win or lose the rally for you. Take one wrong turn and drive 3 minutes in the wrong direction at 85 mph… you lost that day. Pull over to map a checkpoint for 5 minutes…. you lost that day. Other things that help you win are less fuel stops, no food stops, no bathroom breaks, no stopping for ANYTHING… And what do you win? Glory… the best prize in the world. This rally took us ľ of the way across the us, hit 3 road course and one drag strip. Just the tracks alone are worth the retardedly cheap entry fee of $500. ($400 to event and $100 directly to the charity.) Reduced hotel rooms in 4 star venues, nightly parking lot and lobby parties, shenanigans abound, etc etc etc… You can’t afford NOT to do one.

 

The rules of the rally are simple… Don’t get a ticket for a moving violation. This will disqualify you from winning any prizes for the entire event. Get video’d by another team driving like a retard or hooning around looking moronic, and you get DQ’d. Aaaaaand, there are “do not finish before” times. If you break that time, you are DQ’d, and the event organizers will kick you in the junk for an hour…. it’s not worth it. The #1 rule of the rally is Have Fun. If yer not having fun, yer not doing it right, go home, you are a lost cause.

So, down to brass tacks… let’s recap this epic week. This will be long winded, and I apologize in advance. Let’s start with the car. We decided to take a new-to-me 2002 911 Turbo. Car is fairly built and pushes somewhere between 5-600hp and 6-700tq, depending on what dyno you talk to, lol. Not the most dependable or practical 5000 mile rally car, but no one ever said we were practical. We had previous dubbed ourselves Team Champagne due to how classy we are…. or something. So, our livery theme for this rally needed to be appropriate… here’s how our 600hp champagne bottle turned out….









As with all the previous years, none of this stuff is printed decals, it is all die cut vinyl, layered to created the imagery. Takes freaking forever, but I think it’s worth it, sometimes sleepless nights pay off. Turned out well… and we hoped it would be cool enough to put us in the running for Best Dressed Car.

Our journey began on the Saturday morning before the event - we departed from our local Cars and Coffee at Fuel Coffee Shop in Cincinnati, OH… seemed fitting. Dan Kinzie and I were a ball of nerves and excitement, and we were still 8-10 hours from our starting point for the rally. Let us begin...

 

We headed to Takoma Park, MD for the traditional pre-rally party to be held at the abode of a rally participant that lives near the start line, Walter. We found a super model on the way there to pose by the car, impromptu photo shoot (NSFW)….



Gracious host, Walter greeted us after our 8 hour drive with a fridge full of delightful IPA’s and a table full of grilled foods for us to recharge on. Beer pong and ladder ball continued into the night as we partied with a couple dozen rally teams. Out came the Fuel Moonshine…. and that’s about all we remember from that point on… Walter has a chalkboard fridge and his one rule was “no penises.” So of course….



Stayed at Davis’ (fellow rally addict) house that night and started our day with Champagne, hit Dogfish Head for lunch and then proceeded to Martinsburg and Summit Point Raceway for driver’s meeting and lap sessions. We had officially settled into our home for the next 10 days, the cramped quarters of a 996 turbo… ugh.

 

Back at the hotel, everyone is a bit on edge being the night before an amazing 5 day rally… Good shot here of about a ⅓ of the field in the parking lot. The party always moves to the parking lot… There was a charity auction that night and I came away with an awesome leather Audi overnight bag…. Italian leather, 1 of 1 blah blah blah… etc. It is a cool bag, will be my new go-to rally bag for sure.





The next morning… the parking lot is buzzing with excitement as teams load up their gear to head west. Some cars make a quiet exit towards downtown Martinsburg, WV while others tear out of the parking lot unable to contain the pure adrenaline that courses through the rallier’s veins as soon as that morning comes. My legs have immediately turned from a device used to hold my tipsy *** up the previous night, into tools used to push 911 pedals as quickly as physics will allow. My hand has changed from a Champagne Bottle-holding tool into a permanent fixture on a 6 speed close ratio trans shift ****…. The night before, we all drank and partied like morons in the hotel parking lot…. When the morning comes and teams move to the start line, moods move to completely serious as checklists get ticked, cars get fueled with every last drop of fuel they could possibly hold. Road snacks get purchased, drinks get stowed, windshields get washed….. Driver and Navigators get in their appropriate mental zones. GPS systems are checked, and double checked and triple checked. Phones are charging, ipads are mounted, atlases are put within reach in case of emergency… tire pressures are checked. Radar systems, laser jammers, Escort Live linking, WAZE up and running on two devices… all tested and retested…. Not that we speed, we just like to know where the cops are… just in case i need to reach one.

 

The Day 1 start line is always an amazing buzz of energy. News crews are interviewing teams, rival teams are talking smack, pictures are being taken at an alarming rate, townsfolk are coming out of the woodwork to see what the hell is going on, everyone is milling about talking strategies and plans; **** Obama was even there…. No one knows where we are going, but everyone is planning a route as if we have any idea at all… lol. Seeing 80 teams lined up two by two in the middle of town, preparing to unleash unholy asphalt assault on the world is something that can’t even be described in photos. Then finally after an hour of staging, Tony Intrieri, thru his megaphone (that he refused to hold by the handle), says those 4 words that makes every rallier’s heart skip a beat and puts their head instantly into the game… “Drivers to your cars!” People stop speaking mid-thought, food gets thrown away, drinks get dumped out… Nothing else in the world matters at that instant, besides turning the key on your car. Just saying those words in my head makes my heart race a little bit as I sit here and type this.









The starting grid is built in order based on how much money your team independently raised for the charity. We did our best fundraising to date for this event and came up with enough funds to put us in 8th place on the grid, which we were happy with in a team of 80 cars. Being top 10 was our only desire, as any further back than that and you have deal with a lot of rally traffic at the checkpoints, and as we have said before, EVERY SECOND COUNTS when it comes to getting in and out of checkpoints throughout the day. Our 8th position put us starting about 3 minutes behind the #1 car. Those 3 minutes are literally the longest 3 minutes of your life. You watch that first car leave and all you can imagine is how far away they are getting from you as you sit there with sweaty hands and shaky knees awaiting your turn to pull up to the start line. It’s an elapsed time event, so start time really doesn’t matter… but try to convince a rally driver of that…. impossible. Scott and Tony man the start line. As you pull to the line, they log your time and hand you a checkpoint sheet for that day, and you are off and running.

 

Some prior mapping that morning, and our knowledge that we would most probably be hitting Rt.50 led us to the plan of taking a left turn out of the start line and heading that direction towards 50. Our plan seemed to be foiled as we watching the 7 teams in front of us all tear straight ahead from the start line. We stuck to our guns and went left and had passed all but 1 of the 7 teams before finding rt.50 and heading west. Like I said, seconds are EVERYTHING, and it doesn’t take speed to win, it takes good navigation. Day 1 was by far the most fun driving day we had on the 5 day event. The roads in West Virginia are absolutely amazing, and we had just the car to crush the twisties with. We spent most of the day rolling with the Totter family’s Audi R8 6 speed, and we were like 2 train cars connected with a chain through the mountains the whole day. Driver Adam Totter is like 22 years old. Drives a 6 figure Audi like he was born in it; amazing driver. When I was 22 I was skateboarding and eating dry Ramen noodles… This guy is driving a supercar across the US. Much respect for him and his co-driver/father Donaldo Totter; good people.



Day 1 took us to some amazing checkpoints, with the highlight being an abandoned insane asylum. We were required to do a 20-minute tour at the Trans Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston, WV. By far one of the creepiest places I have ever been inside. Check out these pics… I can’t imagine being in this place after dark, ever…

 

Day 1 ended at Kiser’s BBQ…. but like every other team, we went to the wrong Kiser’s BBQ and wasted at least 20 minutes. We rolled into the finish line about 3 minutes ahead of the next team to arrive. But, like I said, it’s an elapsed time event, and Team Angry Goat left the starting line 4.5 minutes after we did, therefore beating us on Day 1 by 90 seconds and putting us in 2nd Place. Team Totter in the R8 came in 3rd and dozens of teams filed in after that. This is the second Rally that Team Angry Goat has beat us by a margin of 90 seconds…. and it’s getting old. While we love first place…. we won’t sneeze at 2nd, so we celebrated right with free beers from the Budweiser girls and champagne at Kiser’s along with some amazing BBQ goods. Here are some shots from the finish line festivities….











The party moved from the BBQ down to the hotel where we sipped champagne and fine IPAs into the night, recapping our day’s events. Some swam, some ate, some (us) drank, the pressure of day 1 was behind us. The pressure of Day 1 can only be compared to that feeling you have on a first date… the anticipation of that first kiss… how will it go? will you like it? etc… After that kiss, no holds are barred and it’s time to relax. We placed on the first day, and that was our goal... We got pulled into the event organizer’s hotel room, and after a stern talking to from Tony and Scott for coming “very very very close” to breaking the “do not finish before” time… we decided we might should back it off a notch the following day. Who knew that there would be some other aviary mishap that would slow us down for the day as well. When the beer was gone, we went to bed…. dreading the rainy forecast that was projected for the next morning.

 

Day 2 start line was downtown Athens, OH - pure little quaint college town. Lining up at 7:30, it’s somewhat the same feeling as the day before; stress levels and anticipation are still somewhat high. It’s the whole “not knowing where we are going” feeling that gets to you. It makes you antsy and nervous at the same time. We staged our car on the beautiful cobblestone street and walked up the block to have breakfast at a little classic diner. Amazing biscuits and gravy, and this greasy spoon becomes a place I will hit again if I am back in Athens anytime soon. Back at the car, we clean windows, stow gear, and get prepped for another day.



We leave the startline in grand tire screaming fashion again as we head west towards our first checkpoint, the Hopewell Burial Mounds. We see Totters in the R8 on the side of the road as we tear out of Athens and direct them to follow us. With them in tow, we take a few shortcuts and find ourselves on Rt 50 again. At this point, I look down and see that we have NO FUEL. Complete rookie mistake. Forgot to fuel up the night before like we usually do, so didn’t even think about it the next morning. An early unplanned fuel stop was in our future, so this day was probably a no-win for us, as we will be at least 5 minutes behind after we take 16 gallons. The R8 stops with us, we fuel up and we are on our way again towards the mounds.



After finding the mounds even with the oddly conflicting addresses on the google, we were on our way to the next checkpoint. DK knew this one right away as he was just at an event at this place, and his father had actually flown in the plane that was showcased on our checkpoint sheet. I was excited to be on the way to the Warbirds Museum in Clermont County.

We had picked up a few more teams in our train at this point. We were being followed by the R8, Team Grocery Getter in their “stock” Dodge Caliber, and I can’t remember who else at this point. Moving along Rt.50 at a pretty good clip with this train of cars behind us I see an odd sight up ahead of us and I say to Dan, “Look at this big *** bird, just walking across the street.” Right after I said it, I realized that contact with this bird was inevitable at this point. In the 4 seconds it took from when I saw the bird til we contacted it, I thought about 470 situations that could possibly occur. We watched in dismay as it tried to get airborne after seeing us approaching it at what i’m sure looked like a speed of mach 3 to the bird.. It flapped its wings so slow, like some stupid wounded ostrich and couldn’t get any higher that directly in line with DK’s face. We later described the flightless idiot as being a Pug dog with wings. It hit the windshield, sounding like a bomb went off inside the vehicle. I had drifted as close as possible to oncoming traffic in hopes to skirt it, but i couldn’t get out of the way. BOOOOOOM. The next couple second were somewhat surreal, and I couldn’t even say anything. In my mind, “did this just happen?” Out loud, “FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!” Pulling this train of 5 teams, we had to find a large enough place for everyone to pull over to check out the real damage. From the inside, it looked catastrophic, passenger side of the glass caved in. I think the tint on the inside of the windshield was the only thing that kept Dk from holding a large flying dog in his lap.

 

Once we pulled over and surveyed the damage from the outside of the car, we were met with huge relief. There was no body damage to the a-pillar or roof. It appeared to our untrained eyes that all we needed was glass. WOOT! And glass should be easy to find right?! No problem. We couldn’t have been any more wrong about anything else this entire rally.









So, we decided to skip the Warbirds Museum and head right to the Edgewater Dragway as it was closer to Cincinnati, which is a location sure to have the Porsche glass in stock to get installed. I spent the next 2 hours on the phone with my insurance company and Safelite trying to coordinate a glass install that afternoon. As luck would have it, it wasn’t going to happen, not in Cincy and not that day at least. More on that later….

We arrived at the dragstrip, excited to see what the car would put down in the Ľ, and hoping that they wouldn’t be too stringent on tech and allow us to run with the smashed windscreen. On the way there, I had put in a call to Tony Barber from Turn In Concepts, an amazing shop in Cincinnati that specializes in high performance and race car builds. After they had previously aligned it a few week earlier, we have had a problem with a toe adjuster bolt coming loose on it due to some boogered threads. When loose, the car feels like a bowl of wet spaghetti in the rear and won’t track very well in turns. Tony Barber, being the super cool **** that he is, met us at the track and got dirty under the car tightening things back up for us before we hit the track. Super cool and way beyond customer service.

 

Time to hit the track, and let me start this by saying that I have NEVER drag-raced in my life. Never lined up to a set of light’s etc. I have driven down a dragstrip, but never timed, never lighted, etc. So, yeah, I suck at it. I did about 6 runs, with my best being 12.2 @ 127mph. Not awful, but the car is capable of better and so is the driver, lol. It was the best time of all 80 rally cars, but that isn’t saying much. We saw some really fun dragraces while there, including Matt Farah’s SRT Grand getting spanked by Dandrow’s sleeper BMW X1. We also saw the battle of the mini-vans, epic.





The rest of my time at the track was spent on the phone with Safelite trying to arrange a glass install for the following day. And success…. 9:00 am appt the next morning, in Indianapolis. A few hours out of the way, but fresh glass will be nice. We borrowed a roll of duct tape from Bill Tumas of CJ Pony Parts (i still owe him a replacement roll) to do some road side windshield reinforcing… for what it’s worth anyway. We referred to it as the Red Hot Chili Peppers mod.





We received our afternoon checkpoint card at the track and moved on to see what else our day had to offer. It couldn’t be any worse than our morning, that’s for sure. Our card revealed that we were to hit a cool vintage automobilia shop and a restored old school gas station on our way to the finish line for that day. Both locations proved to be very cool stops for sure! Here are some shots from the Automobilia haven in Lawrenceburg…







Last shot there is Team Mustang girls. Courtney Barber and a LeeAnn drive this classic all over the US from rally to rally event. Real troopers for sure. Jonathan King, part of the D.Y.E. Crew was caught in the act of putting a state decal on the Sienna. We never actually hit KY, but we could see it from the sign shop, and figured it was good enough to warrant the decal being used. He kept track of his trip from San Diego, CA all the way to the east coast and back again, with a map on the actual vehicle showing where he had gone. Very cool.

 

Next stop was a pretty sweet historical gas station, refurbed into a sort of museum. We all sipped on bottled Coca Cola and dinged the bell from the still operational air line by the pumps. Ding Ding! Fill ‘er up, Charlie!





We blew out of there and headed for the Spring Mill State Park, our hotel for the night. Amazing place, tucked away in the middle of a state park. We somehow got lost on the one road that goes in there to the hotel…idiots. I blame it on the extreme lack of champagne that day. Place was serious old school, like actual metal room keys and locks on doors. We had a good time at this place, sweet indoor/outdoor pool - great home-cooked food - great game room. I bit off a good portion of my tongue after going into the pool against my will… good bloody times. We saw Tony play ping-pong topless, we drank bottles and bottles of Champagne, played with creepy animal puppets, “distributed” 400 or so champagne corks, wore bow ties… and of course we left our calling cards….



Our next morning, Day 3, we did not get to enjoy the usual start line anticipation. Our 9 am appt. at Safelite in Indianapolis required us to roll out of Spring Mill at 6 am in hopes to arrive there early and get back on the road to catch up with the rally folks. There is nothing worse than missing a day of rallying… nothing. We would have to pour on the speed in hopes of not losing the whole day after our install.



So after sitting there for two hours, we were informed that they couldn’t repair our windshield due to the moldings that were needed. They had the glass but there were two moldings that cannot be reused that they did not have in stock, and no dealership in the Indy area could get them for at least 3 days. ****. We were so dumbfounded that what they were saying didn’t even register in our heads. “Soooooo, what are you saying?” And with 4 hours already wasted, we got back on the road to catch up with the rally cars… only after some more duct tape windshield reinforcement. The smashed area began to sink into the interior area further and further with wind force. Sometimes Dk would get small bits of glass bouncing off the dashboard into his lap. Then a few more hours on the phone to try to set up an appt later in the week for replacement, it still wasn’t looking positive at all. Hell, at this point, we were used to only having two thirds of a windshield. Goddam birds.

 

At this point, we were roughly 4 hours behind any of the rally teams for that day, our only hope was to catch up to some teams that were just taking it easy that day, and not playing competitively. As luck would have it, some of our very own D.Y.E Crew were holed up in a park in Olney, IL looking for white squirrels. We put the hammer down and burned rubber across Indiana as fast as that 911 would take us. We arrived in Olney, and proceeded to a city park where these white squirrels are known to hang out… like some kind of outcast gang. We were there for an hour… not one goddam white squirrel showed its face. Since were were the last of 80 teams to roll thru there, I’m sure they were sick of being harassed, as the checkpoint required that you get a selfie with one of these white squirrels. And word at the hotel that night was that they were not a cooperative group. So, with no squirrels, we got a shot of the peeps that were there with us, zero points, lol.



We hammered out of the park and got back on 50 heading west again. Our next checkpoint wasn’t until the far side of Illinois, and our stomachs were urging us to stop. Stopping for a real meal during a rally a major no no, and a faux pas that will often put you in last place. But, since we were already in last place for the day, we were having a mental struggle with not stopping. Having not eaten a solid meal for damn near 24 hours, we decided to peel off from the group and hit some well-deserved food. Man can only survive so long on white Monsters and gas station jerky. Best we could find in this godforsaken selection of tiny Illinois towns was an Applebees. Could have been worse, we didn’t complain. This publicity shot of the car outside the restaurant could be a freakin’ ad campaign shot…. they should pay us for this stuff.



Having spent an hour eating… we had some ground to make up… and we did, at a high rate of speed. We blew through town after town on historic route 50, like paging through a magazine, vaguely looking at the pics, hoping something interesting would pique our interest. Nope. Our destination was the Gateway Motorsports Park, across the river for the St. Louis arch. The plan was to do some paced laps around the NASCAR truck series track, and be on our way. But we had caught wind from some teams that there happened to be a very nicely done go-cart track on site. As fate would have it, we arrived 30 minutes after they stopped doing the paced track laps, but we heard that it was quite boring and slow anyway, so no big loss. But, I must say, the carts were money. Course was set up in a paddock area of the track, using water-filled barricades. I only know they are water filled, because i was pushed backwards into a set of them at about 45 mph…. and I got wet.

 

Even tho we didn’t get to drive the track, that didn’t stop us from doing some sweet keeper shots on it as we left… These might be my favorite photographs from the entire trip.







We rocketed out of there and made our way to Jefferson City, MO - our resting place for the night. Uneventful remainder of the afternoon and evening, aside from a spoiler quickie mart picnic and an after-hours spoiler bar… and of course and obligatory bathroom selfie… I’m sure I don’t even remember taking it.







Day 4, and energy and effort is beginning to wear thin. The next morning had us staged in beautiful downtown Jefferson City, right in front of the capital building...picturesque, even with these grotesque dudes flanking it.





We tore out of the town with a vengeance, hoping to make up for our previous day’s awful finishing time and crappy glass-shop experiences. We were 2nd on the scene at the first two checkpoints, one of which happened to be the world’s largest 8-ball.

 

We ended up heading in and out of the next checkpoint, a train station in Sedalia MO, with a bunch of other teams in tow. When you get in close proximity with other competitive teams, it tends to push you drive a little more aggressively than maybe you should. But, we weren’t doing anything to warrant the coming events…. a full blown traffic-stopping roadblock in the middle of this quaint town. What had we done to deserve this? lol. The state, county and local police had run Rt. 50 down to one lane and funneled us into a gas station parking lot. 20 cops, all barking orders, wearing their big hats and nicely pressed pants….. I felt that this was something they would tell their grandkids about. “Sonny, I once pulled a million dollars in cars over at once…. those were the days.” Little did we know, in front of us, 10 minutes before we got there, 2 teams had blown thru that town like low flying fighter jets…. and now we would pay the price. Damn you Team Stingray and that M5 from Colorado… damn you. At this point, any car covered in decals, regardless of actions or speed, would be considered a threat and dealt with in typical Missouri cop-style.

The county boys went from car to car yanking us out and walking us over to the curb of this gas station. 20 rally drivers and navigators, standing there in line like we were waiting for the school bell to ring and walk to lunch. It was such a spectacle that people were creeping out of their houses and businesses to see what was going on. Dudes parking their cars in the street, and walking through the gas station lot, like we were putting on some kind of car show or something. Once the fuzz had us arranged on the curbs like they wanted, we got our talking to. Once we realized we weren’t going to jail, or getting tickets, or getting impounded, it became quite comical actually. I’m not sure there were even enough tow trucks within 100 miles of this **** town to even tow all of these cars. But, with all that being said, you have never seen a group of adrenaline jacked up race car drivers turn into a bunch of head-down “yes sir” *****es in your entire life. With a ticket taking you out of the rally for good, none of us took any chances on having anything we might say being taken as controversial.

The gist of his little speech was, “We don’t like you guys, we don’t care what your rally is doing here, we don’t care if you were doing anything wrong or not, get the hell out of my state.” And we obliged him… but at a very slow pace. He informed us at the end of his speech, that to make sure we stayed safe, he was gonna have a cruiser posted every 3 miles until we hit the Kansas border. I thought to myself, Yeah right. But, dude was serious, we couldn’t drive 5 miles without waze, escort live, radar and jammer systems going crazy. These guys were just waiting for one of us to screw up, so that we could be made an example of. We also later found out that the Bullrun had come through town the previous year and made a mess of the roads and paved the way for any future rally cars having their asses spanked. We made it through alive and ticket free, that’s all we cared about. And on to Kansas….