The Mudfest that was Ramada Express 2004!
Posted: Tue Dec 14, 2004 7:38 am
My friend and I found ourselves in lovely Laughlin, wanting to do some real spectating rather than the Super Special that would happen the next day in front of the hotel. So off we went towards the lovely town of Peach Springs where we entered the Hualapai Nation and tried to spectate (‘tried’ is the key word here) We narrowly missed the Hualapai airport service break and started chasing down the rally through stage 8/9 but we didn't see ANYBODY near the stage start, which we thought was a bit strange. Well, the stage was cancelled because it was “impassable” due to mud. We, of course, didn't find this out until we got back to the rally HQ and ended up plowing through (in the most literal sense) 50'-100' patches of pure Grand Canyon West MUD! The troughs created by the few recce and Open class cars that had earlier run through it must have been about 2' deep. It was like driving in Autopia-From-Hell with the sludge yanking the Legacy's tires whichever way it pleased. After we made it through the ‘impassable’ stage in the daily-driven wagon, my co-driver admitted that his silence during the excursion was mainly due to his belief that we would be stuck in the middle of nowhere overnight in 2' deep mud, near-freezing temps, with no cel-phone service and all of the rally officials & sweep crews long gone... Way better than spectating!
Congrats to Barret for hanging on and earning 3rd in PGT, 11th overall despite having only 3rd gear at the end, and Chris (rally370) on 4th in PGT! Rob, in his Legacy Turbo had total tranny failure Sat. but was looking strong until then.
Random pics: http://www.williwood.com/motor/laughlin04.html
Full results: http://rimoftheworldrally.com/scoring/R ... esults.htm
-B
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dumb school. this grey legacy in the picture, was built by my dads shop.... its quite the little sleeper. how did he do?
The Legacy did very well during recce. It had a full coat of mud (the minor stuff in the pic above was after he cleaned it...) We spent about 45 minutes at the pressure washer trying to rinse the leftovers off our cars.
Looks like you guys had fun regardless of your spectating difficulties.
And yes, Teh Monster & I usually trek to Garden Spots like Palmdale, Laughlin, Hillsboro, Bangor, and many, many other ditches of roadside America (sometimes Canada too!), in search of rally “spectating” opportunities... Next up: Pikes Peak in June!