I had an amazing year, plain and simple.

Sixty seven days away from home for Rally.

Eight stage rally weekends- Sno*Drift, 100AW, Oregon Trail, STPR, Rally WV, Ojibwe, LSPR, Rally de Paris.

Six stage rally drivers- Tim Smigowski, Josh Chang, Piotr Wiktorczyk, Silvio Alva, Chad Eixenberger and Matt Marker.

Four rolls- Piotr at Oregon Trail, Silvio at Ojibwe (times two), and Josh at Paris.

Two DNFs- Oregon and Paris

Two national class wins- STPR and Ojibwe, both with Silvio.

Two regional wins- Ottawa and Keweenaw regionals at LSPR.

Two TSD rallies with two different drivers- POR with Dave Parps and Wisconsin Winter Rallye with Carl Seidel.

One TSD class win- Wisconsin Winter Rallye with Carl.

6) Sno*Drift

It's my home town event. I hadn't booked a ride and was set on sitting it out, begrudgingly so. Tim called me early in the week to say that Christine may not be able to make it, and on Thursday he called again to give me the go-ahead.

We were plagued with mechanical issues most of the weekend, poor fuel/air mix on day one, no power steering on day two. We spun into three or four snow banks over the weekend, even before the steering issues. It turns out the car, rally ready, is over two tons. I was highly impressed with Tim's ability to throw that car around through the good and the bad.

We didn't do so hot when times were added up, but I had a blast. Tim pressed when he could, and when things weren't working in our favor, he made me laugh. The final stage, while we sung, joked about Travis and the deer, and called stage notes in odd accents was a fun way to keep the event entertaining.

5) Silvio, Ojibwe

It was Silvio's second event, and my second time in the car with him. I flew into the twin cities, rode up to Bemidji with Paul Winters, and was ready for a fun event. Unfortunately things were against me.

The intercom wouldn't work with my helmet despite working for me at STPR. The rally odo was shot. The car had no speedometer or odometer. I had to run the rally by the sound of the engine and a stop watch. I wasn't going to risk losing my voice for when I really needed it, so I called notes with hand gestures.

On the co-driving side, I managed to have no issues with any bit of my improvisation. No transit penalties (minus a small over the speed limit through and O control that I called before we hit it and said the exact speed we'd be over by when telling him to slow).

Day one was slow for us. We managed to hobble together an intercom for day two, so we sped up. I pushed Silvio on the first two stages, enough so that we caught an STi five or six miles into stage 10.

During a long straight, while we couldn't' see due to dust, Silvio kept trying to turn left. I kept straightening him out, but he finally just cranked the wheel. We went into the ditch, rolled on to my side, caught something and rolled the other way on to his side, landed on the wheels, and just took off. Four miles later we were back on the heals of the STi.

The car was in ROUGH shape. We were missing lights, glass and a body panel, but it kept ticking. On the next stage we lost a tire, and while jacking it up it promptly fell. Silvio cranked that thing up from the ground with a never-say-die attitude that still impresses me. We lost 20 minutes, still managed to finish, and moved into the lead for the National G2 championship.

4) Debannering with Eric Dahl and the Canuck contingency at Ojibwe

I may have had more fun debannering than I did through any rally. Pranks, moonings, Grand Theft CR-V, it was a hoot.

3) Rally West Virginia with Chad

It was fun to step into a car with a driver I was familiar with. Chad drove the piss out of that golf over some of the best rally roads I've seen. It was fun to be running in a pack of Subarus and Mitsubishis with a twenty year old golf, holding our own.

If it weren't for a few flat tires, we would have finished second in MaxAttack!!!, as it worked out we finished fourth, well beyond what I think either of us expected going into it.

2) STPR, the whole shebang.

I rode to the event with Jeff Moyle's crew, all Tony of them. We left Gaylord Michigan at 1 pm on Tuesday as planned. What changed was our destination. Instead of heading straight to Wellsboro to have a rest before Recce, we had to divert to Vermont to stop at VSC and put a motor and transmission in Jeff's car. Small detail.

We drove straight to VSC and arrived at 11 a.m. on Wednesday. We worked on the car until 11 p.m., pushed it in the trailer, and left for Wellsboro. We arrived there at 6:01 a.m., were I proceeded to meet Silvio and begin recce by 6:03.

It was Silvio's first rally, and he needed some guidance. He has spirit though, and worked through all of the issues of the weekend.

I should have walked away from the event with three incidences to get thrown out by safety stewards and six minutes and forty seconds in penalties. Instead, through guile, flirting with workers, and plain old trickery I walked away with nothing but a class win.

One of the best moments was pulling up beside Scott Wilburn on a transit. He was at the side of the road with a flat and he didn't want to proceed because the tire was eating into the wiring harness. I took my camel pack, ripped the insulating layers apart, zipped tied them to the harness and told him we'd follow him back to service as he three-wheeled around the Pennsylvanian country side. He ended up getting the car fixed, back on the stages, and won his class. That's rally.

1) Oregon Trail

I was supposed to run the event with Matt "Bling" Johnston, who emailed me Monday (when I was just about to leave home to drive to his house), to say that we were out. I thought I would have a week of nothing but dinking around the house, but that changed on Tuesday.

Piotr called me that morning to see if I was interested, of course I was. He called me again that afternoon around three to tell me it was a go. I booked a flight out of GR, packed and left home thirty minutes after hanging up the phone.

I got to Oregon on Wednesday, spent the night hanging around with Jeff's crew again, and Thursday hanging around with Matt Bushore. We went to some steel mill / Busch series car shop, hiked up a waterfall after eating the nastiest Mexican food of my life, and horsed around the Portland area.

On Friday morning I first met Piotr. That night I had the fastest rally experience of my life. I was behind on my calls and generally lost all night. Superspecials are a bitch to learn a new driver on, especially when the learning curve from what I was used to to Piotr was so steep.

Once we got in the woods on Saturday I got more comfortable. At one point we were topped out in fifth gear, dust so thick neither of us could see beyond the hood, hitting a series of sixes and fives into a hairpin. At the end of the stage Piotr told me it was perfect and that he couldn't have pushed like that if he didn't trust the notes.

Unfortunately we lost second and third gear on the last stage of the day, dropping us to second in PGT and fifth or sixth nationally. Our service crew swapped in a new box that night, minus an LSD. On Sunday we passed enough guys out on the first stage to be sitting first in PGT and on the national podium when our rally ended.

We entered a corner, the inside wheel lifted, and without the LSD we couldn't grab the road. We slid off at about five miles and hour, put the car on the side, and ended our run. It was a hell of a ride.

That night was interesting too, I had never partied that hard in my life, thank you to all involved in that situation.



Lots of folks to thank for a great year-

[Sno*Drift-] Tim and Christina Smigowski and crew
[100AW-] Josh Chang and Mike Martin, Matt Bushore and Arlene.
[Oregon Trail-] Piotr and Cascade Motorsports, Jason Grahn, the RV, Tony and Carl, Matt
[STPR-] Tony Wolf, Silvio and crew, Scott Wilburn, Chris Greenhouse and crew.
[RWV-] Matt, Chad, Gabe, Moenster and Nunnemonster
[Ojibwe-] Erik Dahl, Canada, Amy Springer, Ananda, Silvio and crew, Paul
[POR-] Dave Parps
[LSPR-] Matt Marker and crew, Carl Seidel
[Paris-] Dave, Josh and crew, the Millers, the Texas National Guard
[Wisconsin-] Carl, Dave Cizmas

In general- Everyone who's gotten me on stage, helped me out in anyway, or just brought a smile to my face.

To anyone I've forgotten, I'm sorry.