Northwest Rally Council

Four teams turned out for our June Friday Nighter. It was a brisk romp of just over two hours.

The odometer check was a variant of the traditional duck path out to 208th Ave near Bear Creek School, this time departing to the south. Teams found a quickie checkpoint just 0.6 mile in. All teams did a good job resisting the urge to head out early.

The route turned east, heading out Union Hill Road. There was a brief side quest past Fire Station 14 and then things headed north on Ames Lake-Carnation Road. It zigged to Snoqualmie Valley Road and zagged back to AL-CR via NE 80th, with teams timed upon reaching the old bovine guardian at Carnation Farm. The only intended trap on this leg was at its first instruction, where a pause needed to be done after the out time. One team took a different interpretation of another instruction, creating a 2nd trap for them. Like a number of things in the Generals, there are edge cases that fall through the cracks. As it was, the instruction has two possible actions so should have been written differently for clarity.

Leg 3 used Carnation Farm Road to reach SR-203, where a short transit took everyone through Carnation and turned on to Tolt Hill Road. Although not mentioned in the instructions, a sign on the outskirts of Carnation promotes a business offering – “Goat Hugs –>”. The competitive section resumed to lead teams down Snoqualmie River Road, crossed SR-202, and used Issaquah-Fall City Road to reach the checkpoint on the south side of Fall City. There were no traps in this leg – just a suspicious instruction at the very end, CHECKPOINT ITIS.

The start of the next leg demanded some attention. The restart point placed cars ONTO to negotiate a couple of turns through Fall City and also introduced NOTE SMOKING QUACK to CAST at every SPEED LIMIT. A mile out of FC, teams made small loop over a section of Fish Hatchery Road. On Course cars would pass 356th before going RIGHT AFTER 356TH, while Off Course cars used 356th, having seen “356th” below the Harbinger. Once that loop completed, it was up to the top of the Falls and heading out toward Tokul. The checkpoint was just before crossing the old mainline road.

Leg 5 came back to Fall City and then used Preston-Fall City Road, ending on Upper Preston Road. In the pace car, Dave caught my error made when editing the NRIs. The sign at Upper Preston was easy to miss so I changed things to use the Harbinger. In changing L AT “UPPER PRESTON” to L ON UPPER PRESTON, I hadn’t deleted the quotation marks. I sent a quick Broadcast Message to fix this but was uncertain whether it would reach the iOS users (2 of 4 cars). Green posterboard and black electrical tape rendered a [ <– 55 ] below “UPPER PRESTON” under the Harbinger as a backup. A survey at the finish confirmed that all teams received the Broadcast Message.

When SMOKING QUACK was introduced, it explicitly stated it would remain in use until the finish. The critique slip for leg 5 explained that CP11 (the end of leg 5) was the last Checkpoint and there were more instructions to follow to reach the finish. Since the Note is executed at every Speed Limit, the “SPEED LIMIT 30” needed for NRI 58 could not come from a sign meeting the defined term Speed Limit. The same sign will not be used simultaneous by two instructions and Notes take priority over NRIs. Any team using the Speed Limit 30 to do NRI 58 missed the On Course route control.

I’d like to thank Dave Treen for navigating in the pace car and MOD Pizza in the Issaquah Highlands serving as a fine end location. Unfortunately, our anticipated special guest was unable to make their appearance at CP11. My co-worker residing in Preston had planned to be there with one of his ducks.

Mike Daily – rallymaster for IILLAD