As always, morning comes way too early on the east coast. Thankfully I didn't drink (much) at dinner last night, and kept my web page editing to a minimum too. Sorry for the brief update yesterday, but I needed the sleep.

We had a great breakfast at the Basin Harbor Club, and got ourselves into the big lineup for the official start of the Rally.

Dad checks the Jag for the day's run.

We loaned our 2 gallon gasoline can to Miles Collier & Scott George in a souped up Mini... they only have a 6 gallon tank, and with all the extra horsepower they burn fuel at twice the usual rate.



We finally make it to the head of the line for our checkout.

We arrive at the first checkpoint with a few minutes to spare.

John Burton pulls up in his Lotus, while dad talks with Richard Fraser.

We switch places and dad drives through the checkpoint and zero's it out. (Whoo hoo! Always nice to start with no penalty time.)

I navigate the second leg, so I have lots of pictures to share. The roads were devoid of passing areas, so we stayed in a tight little pack with an Alpha and two Ferraris.






The second-worst thing a rallyist can encounter: The slow moving camper.

We arrived at the second checkpoint with some time to spare, but as our time approached, the *worst* thing that can happen to a rallist occured: Somebody had their time wrong and was attempting to take OUR check-in time slot. It was the guys in the Alpha, who finished one minute ahead of us at the last segment, but were assigned the minute *after* us for this one.

We were arguing the point at the last cone before I finally just told Dad to go... by then he only had about 4 seconds to make what we had planned to run in 10. He gunned the Jag and with me counting seconds out loud, was able to actually zero the leg. Amazing.

The final TSD segment was from Jay Peak in Vermont, to Orford (Magog) Quebec, specifically for the "track event" of the day.

We checked out behind two Toyota GT2000's.

A little ways down the road we saw the Fraser's, our lunch companions, on the side of the road, with their 1953 Ferrari 212 Inter PF Coupe... with a dead clutch. (sigh)...

Helen seemed philosophical about it, saying, "well, now we get to drive a Mercedes."

We crossed into Canada at a lonely little checkpoint, with a very nice Quebecquoise performing the usual ritual... "Have you any Firearms?"
I should have taken a photo of her. Oh well. I did remember to snap one as we pulled away:

"mai oui, nous pensuour en metrique!"

Pardon moi "ecole-garcon" Francais!" =)

The rest of the leg was very straightforward driving and navigation. We arrived at the "track" for our checkpoint, swapped drivers (Dad likes finishing, and since he's batting 1000 I'm OK with that.) We zeroed the checkpoint and headed for the track....

Whoo hoo! Karts.
I hadn't driven karts since the last time I was in Munich. Man what a blast.

Here Dad and I are geared up for our outing. We did very well. I managed to always beat Dad's best lap time by a second or so, but we were in the middle of the pack overall. We both spun out a time or two, and in the "final race" I was in a pretty prime position at the pole (outside second kart) but ended up in a major CF in turn 5 when three guys spun out ahead of me. I ended up in the dirt, behind three karts, so it took me the whole rest of the race to catch up to the leaders. That said, I still had a ton of fun.

We then had a short transit to the hotel. Dad washed the car, and I checked us in. I wrote this up and then I am off to dinner... hopefully I can get on the Internet to update the site tonight!

OK I have the results in-hand, and we are tied for first with seven other cars. We lead our class by 1 point. This is not unusual for the first day of a rally... sometimes it takes the whole week to shake out the top pile.

8 cars have no penatlty time. 7 have 1 second. 2 have 2 seconds. The next car has 32 seconds. It goes up exponentially from there.

Next day: Monday - To Quebec City!