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Old 10-12-2004, 04:24 AM   #1
Protege Menace
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Default Pics, Video and story from my first PRO Rally event(Ojibwe) (3.5 mb of pics 56 DIAMA)

My server will be really slow since theres 3 megs of pics and lots of people downloading. The server will crash at 12:30am so don't tell me pics don't work because I know and theres nothing I can do






Ojbwe Forest Pro Rally 2004

Driver: Ben Hanka

Co-Driver: Me


Again, I agreed last minute to co-drive for someone, this time it was Ben and a first gen Protege.


Day -1
Im driving the 2 hours from Fargo to Bemidji and arrive before ben and help his uncle get the car ready. There is a LOT to be done. We need to take my hella rally light bar off my car and install it onto the rally car, put on all the stickers and get a bunch of other stuff done to teh car. we spent around 7 or so hours prepping it that night and another few the next day.





Bens dad and uncle. Our service crew.

After many hours of getting the car ready we go to sleep around 1am.


Day 1

We wake up in the morning and find our crew had been working on teh car since 6am or so. We register and have to quickly put on more stickers and our number because tech closes in 20 minutes.


We get there with a MAX of 5 minutes to spare


Pics from tech:





We get back and have a little bit of time to relax before the race begins around 5ish.


Heres the deal. We were supposed to leave the hotel for transit at about 5:35 or so. Ben and I are sitting in our hotel room resting and watching the simpsons. I keep getting this nagging feeling like we should go early to make sure we aren't late and keep teling Ben we should get our suits on and go soon but we keep chilling. Eventually I just feel ike lets go NOW, so we get outside and drive to the hotel parking lot entrance where we are supposed to leave from, we are still a few minutes before our offical leave time.



THERE ARE NO RALLY CARS IN SIGHT.


Evidentally during the drivers meeting we were late for they said it would be a "condensed start" meaning eveyrone leaves at the same time and parades to the stages.

well we get to the pakring lot exit and luckily there were 2 people waiting to give us our tiemcard and tell us we still have time to get to teh stage.





We get to the first stage and get out and wait and joke around with other racers.


Long wait ahead of us.
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Old 10-12-2004, 04:25 AM   #2
Protege Menace
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We finally get to stage and I count him down 5,4,3,2,1,GO and were off. This little protege has quite a lot of power for a teeny little car. We take it easy for the first few stages because we want to finish this race. thigns gos moothly except for one time when Ben lost the rear end and had to reverse back onto course (we didnt hit anything and werent going fast) but otherwise we did well.



Night comes and we flip on the rally lights that we took off of my car. Thank God we had these as the stock lights would not have been sufficient. The hellas do their job and we make it to service where the crew (Bens dad and uncle) put the car on stands and replace some brakes and do some other repairs (not from damage) and get the car ready. it was so nice to have a crew do work so we could sit and relax and walka round the service park checkign out other cars and seeing our stage times.




Here they are replacing the brake pads. And of course I had to have them put up my Norwegian flag


After service is over we were SUPPOSED to run the NJK ranch stage backwards, but evidentally some durnk people were ON STAGE when the PRO guys were running and they had to cancel that stage. Then they cancel the NEXT stage because one car (a new guy with a turbo AWD brand new Evi 8 I think) had ana ccident and they had a 2 hour extraction since the roll cage had penetrated his hip i think



here is a video of the medivac helicopter taking off from the highway in front of a gagle of rally cars. http://nords.no-ip.com/medivac.avi



They canceled a total of 3 stages (well the pro guys got to run most of them but all the club rallyers had 3 canceled stages). We complete stage 8 and then drive back to the hotel for some free pizza before we go to sleep.

Day 2

We wake up andget ready to go to Parc Expose to show off the rally cars at noon. We are 5 minutes LATE and along with 7 or so other rally cars are assesed a PENALTY of 5 minutes i think. Half hour later and they announce that they took off the late penalty since it wasn't given to some people or somethign like that, we got off the hook.



pictures from Parc Expose:





After an hour of that the first few cars start taking off for another day of racing.


We go through stage 9 and 10, the first 2 stages of the day just fine and are having a lot of fun.


here is a pic from one of the guys from Something Awful


And here is a video I think Jim, owner of www.specialstage.com took: http://nords.no-ip.com/hanka.mpg
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Old 10-12-2004, 04:25 AM   #3
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Then we get to stage 11, Chads Yump. This is the LONGEST stage at 22 miles with a HUGE jump halfway through. 2 years ago spectators were allowed on the jump to watch cars fly by. Iwas lucky and got to spectate there in 2002. In 2003 they didnt allow any spectators near the jump, but since I was a marshal theya llowed me and 2 of my marshall friends to help the speed tv cameraman carry his gear and lights to the stage, so we were the only non press at the yump last year. This year there weernt going to be any spectators either.



Anyways, we do the stage and get to teh yump but don't have the speed to get off the ground (but we did get a small rise out of our seats). Abot a mile or 2 after the yump disaster strikes.




We are coming around a 3 Left downhill and all of a sudden I look up as we are FLYING sideways at 50-55mph into the inside of the turn. I see a boulder on the side of the road and were aimed RIGHT AT IT sideways. Ben hit half of a log that was hiding on the inside of the turn in the foliage, which threw off the cars balance putting us sideways (you can see the log in some of the pics). We hit the rock and ride up on TOP of it. After a few seconds of Ben trying to forward/reverse off the rock we determine were stuck. Great, our rally might jsut be over. We have TWO minutes to get back on teh road before sweep comes and tows us out.



We jump out and I pull out the triangles and run down the road a good hundred or so yards and put down the triangles and hold the the "OK" sign. I get back to teh car to help Ben figure out what to do. We frantically try to jack the car up off the rock but we cant get the jack to lift the car much. I see a rock sticking out of the road a few feet away and start CLAWING at the dirt trying to get it out of the ground. We shove that under the wheel and Ben tries to drive off, but all were doing is burining off a lot of rubber. Then we try diggin all of the dirt out from under the one tire that si on teh ground. We try to put some logs under it but still can't get the car off.



minutes have passed as we try different things to get off the rock.





Ben wanted to give up since we were obviously stuck on the rock but I said no way in hell we are giving up. The ONE car behind us (for almsot ALL of the other stages we had been the last car but for this one stage we were in front ebcause we were a tad faster) hadnt shown up and it ahd been 10 or so minutes so I did NOT want to give up yet and we tried to jack the car up usign logs, boards etc.





I decided that sicne we might be stuck ehre for good and there was another rally car behind us I should move the triablges FURTHER down stage since we were on the inside of a blind corner and would get hit. SO i ran and moved the triangles farther away ( I will come to regret this).



After 20 minutes we hear a rally car coming. its the guys behind us. They STOP next to us and yell for us to get our tow strap. I FLY to teh trunk and RIP the tow strap out of the back and hook it to both of our cars. He yanked our car off the rock, i unhooked the strap at they flew off. Heres the fun part. Ben jumped in and get the car running. I still had to pack up the strap, a few loose items. Tehn heres the kicker. I had to RUN AS FAST AS POSSIBLE to collect all 3 triangles I had placed so far awaya nd then SPRINT back to teh car. the last 20 feet I had to walk because i was about to pass out from running so damn hard. I get in the car and the second my foot leaves the ground Ben is flooring it. WERE OFF! I quickly try to catch my breath and put on my harness and atatch my intercom. Then I don't hear anything, crap Ben's itnercom wasnt hooked up. SO here we are flying through the woods and Im reaching over tryign to find his plug so I can plug him in. I do and were back. I find my spot in the route book and start reading off directions all while trying to catch my breath.



Half a mile down the road from where we crashed, we see the car that had pulled us out. We stopped and asked if they needed help but they said they had a broken tie rod. It was depressing not to be able to help them since they ahd jsut saved our rally half a mile ago





After that extreme workout (im a lazy college bum) I get dehydrated and feel crappy yet still read off the route book. For the next 5 stages I get sicker and sicker. I have my puke bag ready to go and by stage 16 (last stage of the day) I can only scan ahead for any 90 degree turns or cautions and let Ben drive without my help so I don't puke.



3 or so stages after our crash we had a service where they fixed our severely dented undercarriage with a BFH sledge, I tried to nap on the cot I brought and got rehydrated and ate some food.

Service 2: we got interviewed by the www.Rally-America.com lady and told about our crash and that we wanted to thank the guys that pulled us off the rock.



here was the damage from the crash. My rally lights got bent, lic. plate got bent but that was it (I later find one of the lights has a hairline crack) not much damage for what happened






Halfway through the last stage of the rally Ben says we are out of gas (his gauge is broken) and the engine is cutting out momentarily on hard corners. We are now dealing with a carsick co-driver and fuel starvation. We make it to the end of the last stage and I get out and sit on the road for a bit to feel better. I do a little bit and we take off. we have a 5 minute service down the road, but SINCE we were 20 minutes behind eevyrone else and the last car, the roadside servuice was pretty much empty. we had no gas and were 40 minuts from any gas station. LUCKILY the ONE service van there we stopped as they were leaving and bought 20 dolalrs worth of gas off them so we could make it home (had we run out of gas we wouldhave gotten a DNF).



We make it back to headquarters late and join the party, telling stories with other teams eating tons of food etc.



We had done it, we finished the rally which was what our goal was. Of the 52 entries only 37 finished the race. We passed quite a few cars upside down or stuck in the woods 2 miles after our crash we saw 3 cars who all went off at the same spot, all upsidedown. We even got mooned TWICE by people whos rally was over.



The next day we took the rally lights off, packed up and went our separate ways. And that was the end of my firsr Pro rally.
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Old 10-12-2004, 04:26 AM   #4
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After I left from bemidji on my way back to Fargo I decided to take a detour and go back to where we crashed to see if I left behind anything and to take pics. Driving Chads Yump using my route book and my cars trip odometer I made it to our crash site.






This is the rock I had to dig out of the road with my bare hands. You can see the burn out mark where we shoved it under the tire and tried to drive on it.


I placed my keys on top of the rock to show its size. WHY a boulder of this size was sitting 1 foot off of the road in the middle of nowhere was a mystery to me. we were SO unlucky to hit the ONE rock there.


After that I drove through the woods and it was drizing, it was quite relaxing being alone in the woods and I stopped a few times to get some pictures.







Quite a beautiful end to an awesome weekend of racing.

The End
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Old 10-12-2004, 04:45 AM   #5
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woa. that sounds like the most fun ever. I want to rally sooo bad.
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Old 10-12-2004, 11:27 AM   #6
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Good writeup John.
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Old 10-12-2004, 11:31 PM   #7
Protege Menace
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pics are back up
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