Hampton Roads Club Mini

I had a ball at the gimmick rally!  There are several things I'd like to cover...


1: Thank you Dale, Regina and whoever else participated in creating the gimmick rally!  I really enjoyed myself and I'm sure everyone else did too!  VERY well put-together event!  

2: Thank you Kathy for bringing out those doughnuts!  I fear I might have driven Laurie crazy with my sugar high though.     The voices in my head made me say some pretty unbelievable things...  

3: Thank you Laurie for being my co-pilot!  

Hey Dave, hope yer feelin' better. the doughnuts hit the spot!  I only one, I think that might be a record! We raised a tad over 800 bucks. The restaurant kicked in about $150. The entrants must have been pretty hungry, cause we got 20 % of what we spent and they chipped a bit more. We put half of your donation into the raffle, but since I touched your tickets, they were jinxed just like mine.

So the rally was just over 4 hours long and about 82 miles. It left Newport News, headed up Warwick to the James River Bridge. Through the little communities of Battery Park and Rescue and on into Smithfield. From there is was a quick trip route 10 to Surry, where it's a crime NOT to stop at the Surry House restaurant. And I did that 4 times in the last 2 months! we crossed the James again, this time on the Jamestown/Scotland ferry for a nice break from driving and once on the peninsula they found their second checkpoint. The first was in Smithfield. On down route 31 to Williamsburg and towards Busch Gardens. Over to Yorktown to round out the historic triangle of VA. The rally ended up in Poquoson at Anna's Pizza. Boy, was that baked Ziti good! There we tallied up the points and awarded over $500 in raffle prizes. Turnout was a little low, but everybody had a good time and no one really wanted to kill me for the diabolical questions. Well, Laurie maybe!

Here's the break down for our MINI members finishing order:

1st over all and with a navigator this year was Kurt with a total of 149 out of 158 points.
a very close 5th was Roy and Lelane with 134 points.
7th was Jeff and Laurie with 131 points.
Erika and Mark Collins were 11th with 119
and Adam struggled solo with 105 in 13th place.
Our buddy Harry and Katie Gerwin couldn't complete the event due to a prior engagement but were 5th overall after the first two stages. This was one of the tightest rallies I've ever put together. The top 10 were separated by just of 25 points.

All told, we had a blast and I'm tired enough to prove it. I know the drivers and navigators are as well. We'll do this again next year with a few more twists. There is even talk of a poker run and another gimmick rally, this one on a Saturday night! Could be interesting.......

Thanks again everybody!

What a fun time - one suggestion there be a minimum size of the info we are looking for For those of us over a certain age looking for things that are small print , in a crowded billard board and so on, it was too much of a challenge or maybe the driver should be given a handicap for having an old person in their car.

Who had an old person in their car?     Oh, wait.  Erika!  I'm sure Mark did the best he could...   

The questions were GREAT!

Like I told you at the restaurant, if you owned an alignment shop, I would've sworn  you were trying to drum-up some business by having us go to that darned shopping center!

Some of those potholes were TREACHEROUS!

Oh yes I did!  Couldn't you read what I said?  Put your quadrafocals on there ma'am. 

She is soooo going to kick my butt...

Now it's Kurt's turn.

Oh No You Dit-Ent!

16 teams total
14 finished in the allowed time.
1 finished as I was leaving the restaurant (finished 13th)
1 didn't finish-had a commitment that conflicted time wise