So before I get going too far, I wanted to say thanks to some folks who's help made this whole weekend come together.

• The guys at Cascade Autosport - Peter, Ross and Todd, for doing such superb work on the car, and holding our hand through some of the decisions necissary to get the vehicle in tip-top shape.
• Pete Lahm, with P-sport, for getting us some last minute equipment. The Peltor intercomm performed absoluetly perfectly, and after only 1 stage, we were thanking our lucky stars that we weren't having to try and yell over engine noises and gravel bouncing off the skid plate.
• Carl over at The Wagon Shop in Bellevue for making my Volkswagen parts sourcing a non-existant issues. Your excellent skills, suggestions, and immediate accesibility saved my bacon in more than one way. Thanks all of you!

Next, the fabulous four, our service crew! These are our friends and family, taking thier own un-paid time to follow us around with a truck and some useful bits and pieces, cooking for us while we were out on stage, and putting up with our stressful tempers. Your intelligence and commitment are a huge reason we got this whole rally thing started to begin with!

So... Oregon Trail Pro Rally 2003!!! This was a great weekend of driving on some lovely roads, with excellent weather (albiet one massive monsoon sunday morning), and thankfully fairly trouble free for us. Sadly, the rally started on the wrong foot, as Subaru's super-stars Mark Lovell and Roger Freeman crashed shortly into stage 1, instantly killing both competitors. After a long deliberation, the rally was continued, skipping stages 1 and 4 (a repeat of stage 1).

The morning of day one was mostly spent in the Vernonia High School service park, where we awaited the news from the course organizers. Once things got rolling again, we headed off for the start of stage 2. Stage 2 was our first stage racing, and we slowly started learning how to navigate the special stages. Stage 3 saw our fastest speeds of the day, topping out right around 100MPH. After completing stages 2 and 3, we returning to service. Some interesting sights were the Mopar Neon car without its entire right-rear suspension/control-arm/tire/brake assembly. Amazingly they still finished strong!

After service, we headed out into the dusk for stages 5 and 6. Stage 5 was a repeat of stage 2, and we quickly realized that important details like auxilary lighting is not merely 'nice', but a necessity, as Ken was having a hard time reading the route book with no map light. I was lamenting the lack of exterior lights, but the high-beams were getting me through, but slowly :)

Stage 6 began with our first mishap. The course split into two roads, one angling up left and sharp, and the other angling left but softer. The course followed the outside corner, the soft left. I turned onto the hard left, realized I was charging up a hill at a marshall and his car, and turned into the grass between the two roads. No problem, a little reverse gear usage on stage (never good!) and we were back on course. The lack of lights and that little mishap set us back 3 minutes behind our previous pace on the stage. Back to MTC (main time control) at Hillsboro. We headed to the headquarters hotel for a special driver's meeting, where we first heard the news about Lovell/Freeman. Tough to hear at the end of the day, but not much of a suprise due to the somber additudes that had been prevailing most of the day. At that point we headed back to the hotel for some sorely needed sleep.

The morning of day 2 began with a drive out to Tillamook. We trailered up the car and headed to the fairgrounds service area. As we were commencing setup of the service area, a torrential down-poor drenched everything for about 30 minutes. Thankfully once it was done the day cleared up nicely. Things got rolling pretty quickly and we headed out to the start of stage 7. Stages 7 and 8 were fairly intense uphill stages. The experience gained on the first day of the rally really showed as we were able to charge up the roads as fast as our car could handle it. The car had plenty of pull in second gear, but the wide ratios of the transmission didn't permit us to maintain speed in 3rd gear, so we spent almost all of the uphill sections winding out second.

Stage 9 had an incident, due to another competitor getting off course on stage 8 and ending up on the course of stage 9. Thankfully the incident was noted and the stage stopped before something serious could occur. This resulted in the rest of the field transiting the stage, and everyone recieving a scratch time.

Service again, once again nothing major. Same routine as before. Clean the gravel out of the drums, get a drink and a bite to eat, and check our starting time. Stages 10 and 11 went well, once again tackling the uphill roads of the Oregon coastal range. Stage 12 was great, and this was our first at-speed run of it. At this point, with the end of the rally in sight, we pushed on through the finish of the stage.

At service once again, with only a 60 mile transit returning to the Hillsboro stadium, we mounted up our street tires, loaded up the service truck and headed back to the final MTC. Checking in to time control ended our rally, with us finishing! We had no real performance goals, except to complete our first event. Thanks to excellent service, and throrough preparation, we were able to complete this goal!

After verifying scores, chatting with some of the organizers and fellow competitors, we loaded up for the drive home, back to Seattle. Lots of lessons were learned, and we'll be back, better prepared, and ready to rock faster than before! See you all at Wild West!

-Chris