Toronto Autosport Club's Infinite Monkeys Rally 2008

organized by Paul and Rita Moore, August 16/08

Well, the 2008 running of the Monkeys took place under perfect weather--no more rain to create deadly washouts, and low humidity for our checkpoint volunteers to enjoy sitting out there waiting for the competitors. It was about time something went right for us, because with only a week before the event, our Green Crew found TWO bridges out, and we had to reroute two portions of the rally around these obstacles!  This was completed with only a slight hitch:  I neglected to correct the last instruction of Section 1 to match the new turn direction.  Although the correct EOS was given in both the Start of Section 2, and the EOS descriptions, the fact that EOS 1 did not match was rather inconvenient to some competitors, and I humbly threw out the scores for Checkpoint 1.  Sorry about that, everyone!

Before we get to the scores, I would like to make sure that our volunteers are suitably acknowledged.  Without these poor people giving up their Saturday to sit out in the middle of nowhere waiting to give you stickers, we would never have had the great day that we did.  Thank you so much to Mike Murphy, Dave Laye, Scott Merrithew, Peter and Margaret Fenwick, Rich and Eloise Sullivan, and Dietmar Seelenmayer for manning checkpoints; to Paul Henshall, who manned a checkpoint and also acted as the RallySport Ontario Steward; and to Kim Sparks and Claire and Brooke Jacobs, who did all the Green Crew work to catch my mistakes (and find the new road closures!).  There can be an advantage to being a checkpoint worker, though:  since you are not on a strict route or time (as long as you make your control opening time), you have some free time to explore some new countryside.  At least one of our crews was astute enough to notice that the rally route passed near Creemore, and took the opportunity to drop in to the 'factory store' and pick up some samples!  A worthwhile detour, for sure!  Lastly, a big thanks to the folks at the Superburger, who let us use their facility for our start and finish location, enabling all hungry competitors and workers to fuel up, deliciously.  The burgers are as big and super as ever!

As you can see from the scores, some of the competitors had a lot of "early" penalties, although mostly nothing large.  This is not because we had a bunch of crazies entered today; it's because last weekend when we checked the route, there were some really rough parts and so we changed some CAS's to unusually slow speeds.  However during the week, most of these roads had been graded and were quite good, making our CAS's feel wrong; thus those (especially in the Novice class with no computers) who drove by the 90%-of-the-speed-limit guideline were driving faster than CAS and got a few small 'earlies'.  Unfortunately the timed to the minute checkpoint caught a few competitors who were not a full minute early there, but got the full 1.0 penalty as per the scoring convention. Live and learn, huh?  The few larger 'early' penalties were either the result of not seeing a "pause" written in the instructions (some were fairly long), or they were victims of my calculation trap at the finish timing--what, nobody thought something was up when I directed your attention to those "aces" painted on that fence?  I did tell you to take note of how many there were!  (Sorry, it's an Evil Organizer Thing.  Unfortunately rallying has a full measure of those!)

Speaking of Evil Organizer Things, it sounded as though this year's least popular Monkey section was the Rigging/Strength of Ropes section.  One navigator put it best at the end when he told me, more or less:  "Now I know some of what you do at work.  I don't like your job."  Yes, I admit, there was a lot of math in that section.  But can't you forgive me, since I didn't give it to you until after the gas break?

A Monkeys tradition is having a couple of extra awards beyond the standard 1st, 2nd, 3rd stuff.  This year the Unstoppable Award was given to Car 7, who traveled much the furthest to compete in the event and collect a few points in the ORRC series and for their club, the Motorsport Club of Ottawa.  They collected a few points on their scorecard, too, but that wasn't what they were aiming for!  If only they hadn't gone wrong in Section 7, things would have been a lot different.  Our other award is the Top Banana Award, given this year to Car 10 who had the presence of mind and the skills needed when they witnessed a motorcyclist crashed along their way.  Our Top Banana team stopped and, with help from the RSO Steward who also stopped, were able to administer first aid to the rider, only continuing on the rally when he was patched up and safe. Thank you Car 10, we are all very proud of you!!

So here are the final results.  Scores with "e" represent earlies; scores in red represent when a Time Allowance was used to achieve the given score; a 20M means a missed checkpoint; a 15M means the checkpoint was found but the team was at maximum lateness (or 'earlyness', in the case of that one overlooked pause at the gas break!).  All in all, some very impressive scores, and some very close competition.  Congratulations to everyone; you are all top rallyists to have done what you did at this, the 6th event in the 2008 Ontario Road Rally Cup.  Series standings are kept on the RallySport Ontario website -- ORRC scores. See you at the next event!  (the ORRC calendar can be found here)

Car #	Class	Driver	Club	Navigator	Club	CP1	CP2	CP3	CP4	CP5	CP6	CP7	CP8	CP9	CP10	CP11	CP12	CP13	FINISH	TOTAL	PLACE
3	E	Bryn Epp	MLRC	Steve Wilton	--	0	0.3e	0.6	1.0	0.7	0.7e	0.3e	0.4	0	3.8	0.8e	20M	20M	10.7e	59.3	1st E
2	I	Tim Laye	TAC	Steven Laye	TAC	0	3.5e	0.9	0.5	0.1	0.3e	0.5e	0.2	0	1.5e	0.4	0.6e	0.5e	0	9.0	1st I
11	I	Roger Sanderson	KWRC	Christina Chinn	KWRC	0	0.4e	0.1e	0.2	1.8	0.6	0	0.5	0	20M	8.9	3.0e	0.6e	0	36.1	2nd I
10	N	Nikola Novak	MLRC	Fiel Cotta	--	0	0.1	0.1	0	0	0	0.2e	0	0	0.5	0.5	0	0.1	0	1.5	1st N
9	N	Jane Leonard	MLRC	Bruce Leonard	MLRC	0	0.1e	0	0.3	0	0.3	0	0.1e	0	0.5	0.1	0.2e	0.1	0	1.7	2nd N
6	N	Trevor Hancher	SPDA	Ted Doig	SPDA	0	2.0e	0.2	0.7	0.5	0.1e	0	1.2	0	0	0	0	0	0	4.7	3rd N
8	N	Ian Wright	--	Stephen Caulfeild	--	0	3.0e	0.2	0.4	1.2	0.5	0.2	0.2e	0	0.2	0.6	0.1	0.2	4.0e	10.8	4th N
4	N	Patrick Logan	--	Shawn Gardiner	--	0	0.6e	0.3	0.6	2.1	0.4e	0.1e	0.3	0	0.1e	0.3e	0.9e	0.9e	4.5e	11.1	5th N
5	N	Stephen Deneka	SPDA	Opal Aristizabal	SPDA	0	0.7	1.1	1.2	1.1	0.1	0.4e	3.0	1.0e	2.2	0.3e	0.7	0.2	7.0e	19.0	6th N
1	N	Kevin Schoenwiese	MLRC	Brian Sexsmith	MLRC	0	1.2e	4.6	1.8	0.3e	1.0e	0.6e	0.3e	0	1.6e	0.2	1.6e	1.2e	5.0e	19.4	7th N
12	N	A. Kulikowski	KWRC	Gary Sutherland	--	0	1.5e	1.2	0.8	1.2	15eM	0	0.9	1.0e	0.5	0.1	0.9	0.3e	2.0e	25.4	8thN
7	N	Peter Brownhill	MCO	Mike McCreight	--	0	0.4e	4.2	0.8	0.6	0.2e	0.4e	0.3e	0	20M	15M	1.6e	1.5e	6.0e	51	9thN