Black River Stages 2011
Black River Stages 2011
Friday, September 23, 2011
We very nearly didn’t finish our fifth running of Black River Stages - one of our favorite rallies. More on that later. BRS is split over two days, the first starting late and running into the night - one of the few rallies in the US that still has night stages.
Mike Miller and Mary Miller join us once more as our service crew having ridden with us in the long tow up to Harrisville, NY.
Our lodging is a cabin on the north shore of Lake Bonaparte - a great location but with the busy rally schedule we don’t get a lot of time to enjoy it. All our in-car video is available in the viewer above.
Friday afternoon starts out with a slight drizzle and we feel fast on stage one. However it seems that others are faster in our class and we are in 7th place as we go into the evening and night stages. Unfortunately I’m one of those drivers that gets slower (some get faster) at night and we fall back. A couple of the last night stages are cancelled since the event is running late following a bad wreck on an earlier stage. We have to replace a damaged top mount and are delayed getting out of service taking a time penalty. We have some fun with some glow sticks and decorate the car with a Tron effect as can be seen in the top banner picture.
A good example of the never-give-up, press-on-regardless attitude that is prevalent in this amazing sport. Many, many thanks to the other teams for their help - we managed to avoid a DNF and keep our rally finishing record intact.