2009 Spring Rally New York
Friday began with another trip to Gaby’s Café for some Mexican breakfast and then it was off to a service at Honor’s Haven. The cars had already completed 6 stages that morning however none of them were spectatable. To make things worse, the weather had already begun to turn on us so, at the service we did a quick assessment of the damage done to the cars and headed over to the first spectator area at Tempaloni Road.
The Tempaloni stage is a repeat from last year’s Spring Rally. The cars would pass 3 times and we knew that if this year was anything like last, this stage would be a must see. Last year the competitors and even a sweeper had troubles negotiating this tight left hander and ended up either sideswiping or under steering into a rock-pile fence on the outer edge of the turn. This year it seemed that the cars were driving somewhat more cautiously however that’s not to say that there weren’t any “incidents”. Let’s just say the Wimpy car didn’t fair too well after high siding into a hefty pile of rocks.
In addition to making the spectator area a muddy mess, the constant rain started to take its toll on the cameras and by the end of stage 11 we had lost a considerable amount of camera equipment.
Luke’s Nikon D80 started losing some button functionality at some point and then the 18-200 lens stopped communicating to the camera body after getting hit by a massive mud wave by a close cornering rally car. Luckily Chris Garaffa had a D300 with him in the spectator area and they swapped out for the time being. The D80 was “weather resistant” and the D300 is pretty much water proof. At about the same time Monkey’s (Brian Monk) Canon 20D crapped out with some oddball errors and inability to take pictures.
Here are some of the good shots we got with our dying camera equipment. Luke was attempting at better motion stopping ability with dual flashes, but that also increases the amount of rain that shows up in the pictures.
After the Tempaloni stage we decided to grab some dinner back at Gaby’s Café. I told you we like our Mexican food…
The next spectator area was designated for the Concord stage located at a golf course in the Monticello area. Like Tempaloni, this stage was also a repeat from last year and it has been used for the Fall International Rally NY in the past. We skipped this spectator area due to time restraints (again) and the fact that we’ve spectated from there before and honestly haven’t been that impressed. The view consists of a straight shot of road that only offers a high speed glimpse of the car as it passes…fun to watch if you’ve never seen it before but the rain wasn’t stopping anytime soon and we were ready to call it quits for the day.
Instead of spectating the Concord stages, we headed to our accommodations located two hours away in East Branch, NY. We would be staying there for the rest of the weekend as it’s only a half hour drive to the Walton stages. There we warmed up by the wood stove and tried our hands at fixing the cameras that took a beating earlier that day. The Nikon D80 and 18-200 lens were successfully dried out and regained 100% functionality, the Canon 20D unfortunately did not revive. With the weather still being miserable and since there’s nothing to do in the town of East Branch, we decided to stay in and feast on deserts while watching a House marathon…
