Where It All Started
CORSA International Convention
July 26-7, 2007
On Thursday, July 26, the autocross took place. We did not attend, so my coverage will be fairly brief. I asked John Cole how he did at the autocross, and he said, "Pretty good."
Meanwhile, we spent most of the day in the waterpark at the host hotel. I didn't take my camera there, so unfortunately for you there are no pictures of me in a bathing suit to post. Caitlin spent something like eleven hours in the pool, so I guess she enjoyed it.
At one point Jake and I went out and put a set of plug wires and new plugs on the coupe. It still runs like crap, but at least I taught Jake something, namely, the time-honored practice of throwing parts at the car.
I had mentioned rain in one of the earlier pages. We have had downpours just about every day, but the rain really hasn't interfered much with the convention except to make the cars dirty. Today, the 27th, started out wet.
I got up at 5:30 a.m. to get packed and get us checked out of the hotel in time to wake the kids, get them showered, packed and fed at the mediocre free breakfast bar and to get the cars loaded and us checked out of the hotel in time to make the participant's meeting at 7:30 a.m. for the rally. We almost made it, a testament, really to our extraordinary ability to herd cats.
We missed some of Clark Hartzel's exhortations, but for the most part I think we got the gist of things. There was a sort of mini-rally to the rally starting point that took us through this neighborhood. (For the web-challenged, the word "this" in the previous sentence is a hyperlink you can click.) We got some interesting looks as Corvair after Corvair drove down Corvair Drive. Leaving the neighborhood, we began a ten mile odometer check run.
We ended up at River Bend Park in Shelby Township, and I confirmed what I had learned on the way to Detroit via GPS; even though my speedometer was not working, my odometer was nearly precisely accurate.
Like everywhere else in the area, the park was wet when we arrived. Here is Jake pestering his mom:
Joy, Allison and Caitlin were crewing the coupe, while Jake, Seth and I were taking the convertible. It was to be the classic "boys against the girls" contest.
Another shot of the lineup in the park:
This looked suspiciously like the wet start in Buffalo. However, I noticed a little blue spot above us and Jake and I decided to put the top down on the convertible. Seth responded by turning his jacket into a cocoon and going to sleep.
Allison, Jake and I took advantage of the opportunity to torment the poor boy.
Shortly after we left the park, we debated about putting the top up, but we didn't and it stayed down for the rest of the rally. When we got to Memphis, we were so confident in our choice that we even put the boot on the car.
I decided not to use the GPS, since we didn't have to drive an exact speed, and gave it to Joy so that she could use it to escape back to the host hotel in case she got lost.
Jake took lead navigator duty while Seth acted as spotter and crew photographer. It is interesting to view the rally from a twelve year old's perspective. Most of the pictures have a bit of car in them because it was hard for him to see out over the doors. Despite that disadvantage, he got some great pictures.
Here, we have the classic "dad's-hand-on-the-wheel-as-seen-from-the-back-seat" shot:
This is the Batman-esque "Corvair-departing-at-precipitous-angle" shot:
Seth also got some of the traditional views of Corvairs in motion that make rallies so much fun.
I liked the way the interior of the car framed this picture.
One of the fun parts of the rally is seeing Corvairs everywhere you go.
Some of the cars Seth captured weren't Corvairs.
One Corvair Seth caught didn't look quite like a rally participant.
Seth also amused himself by taking pictures of things that he thought were interesting. Some didn't flatter our home state so much:
To be fair, he did cover the spectrum.
We passed one stretch of houses that probably went over a mile where every single house had a pond in the back yard.
We made it back to the start/finish point without having to backtrack at all. The way the rally was run, we could either track time as we drove or compute the time based upon our measurement of the legs. Since option "A" was out, given our non-working speedometer, we had no choice but to do option "B". I figure that we had a real advantage with our super-accurate odometer, but we had a real disadvantage in that this approach required me to do math. I always say, there are three kinds of people in this world: people who can do math, and people who can't. Any way, I wrote numbers all over our instruction sheet while Joy and the kids hung out at the park.
A considerable amount of time later, I was done, and it was time to head home. Because we have to get to work on moving to the new house, we couldn't stay for the rest of the convention fun, and as I write this we are back home in DeWitt. Even though it was hard to see the adventure in driving an hour and a half from home to the convention, we had a great time. Although I did a little bit to help out on the convention, my contribution was trivial so I am not tooting my own horn when I say that the DACC did a great job this year. I'm glad they gave such a warm Michigan welcome to our friends from out of state. Thanks, and thank you also to all those who came to visit us here. Come back soon!
