Every rally has its own tempo and its own peculiarities. Especially a big rally, so you have to ease into things and figure out how everything works - how the Rallymaster writes the instructions, how your team will work together in the car, and what the roads are like on the rally.

We left Kirkland this morning and after a brief odometer check, we ran the first TSD leg. To our delight, our plan to have Matt handle the course-following while Jeff kept the car on time worked out great. Gary always had clear and concise driving instructions and a regular report on timing. We don't know our scores yet, but we're optimistic.

We crossed the border into Canada after that first competition leg, and that process went smoothly. Canadian courtesy and efficiency is not just a myth! We stopped for lunch in the exotic A&W in Hope, B.C. and then got on Highway 97 and headed north. This road runs through the Okanagan - one of the most beautiful parts of B.C Around dusk we arrived in Cache Creek, and we started the second TSD leg of the day.

This one was run on a snowy sideroad, and we were ticking along very nicely. Just a few 10ths before the end of the leg, however, we encountered a friend's car stuck in a snowbank - our better impulses overrode our competitiveness and we stopped to pull them out. Well, long story short, there were still two more timing controls, and we fear that we earned ourselves a max score (60 points) at each of those.

But we get to throw out our worst score of the day, and we're optimistic that we did well enough on the rest of the rally today to overcome a small deficit. We'll find out and post another entry later tonight - along with photos of the day's events.

But for now, we're snug at the Sandman Hotel in Quesnel, B.C. - about 55 degrees north, and 23 degrees outside right now - all's well and we're ready to hit the road again tomorrow.

LATE UPDATE:

Because we stopped to help a competitor in a dangerous situation, the rally officials gave us an average score based on our prior performance, rather than the maximum scores on the last two controls yesterday. With this adjustment, Car 2 (Bockman, Tabor, Zurschmeide) is sitting in third place (by one point) in Stock Odo class. Car 1 (Smith, Poirier, Song) is in first place in Unlimited SUV Class and second place overall!