Aquatennial Tour du Lac and Appalachian From the Armchair Rally Archives of Gary Starr
I have always enjoyed teaching those new to our sport the Road Rally concepts for Course and Tour rallies. Perhaps you have seen my Tips for Novice TSD Rallyists in RReNews? I am hoping to do the same teaching with these Armchair Rallies in each edition of RReNews. I would love to see more people try Course rallying. But it often is too hard to understand for people who have never done it, so they get frustrated and never return. There is just no way to practice and learn rally traps before running the actual event. And Rallymasters don’t help by making the traps way too hard. These Armchair Rallies are an excellent tool to introduce the concepts and show how to navigate trap rallies without even getting in your car. And believe me, the traps in these mimic the actual traps on real events. After doing a few of these, you will be ready to take on the challenge of Course rallies!
Again this month, I’m offering both an easy rally for those new to our sport and a harder one for those ready for more challenges. All these Armchair rallies were scanned in from my original paper generals, so some are a little faded. I have also added handwritten notes on some, circled important Generals sentences, or put obvious arrows pointing to the Generals’ areas you’ll need to do the Armchair Rally.
The simpler rally is the 1985 Aquatennial Tour du Lac, by Dave Fuss. This rally has no Main Road. You just follow the course using the “Following the Course” section in the rules.
The hard rally is the 1975 Appalachian, by Dave Teter and David Laffitte. Laffitte sent me this Friday Night Run back in April 2020, upon reading this column. He was involved in designing it and drew the map himself. This rally has a Main Road and a very unique Course Following Priority list, which uses four different “Modes” to move the position of the route instruction in a variable Priority List for course following. Use my circled items (with my arrows pointing to them) in the generals to execute the instructions properly. Study these circled items (or rules) carefully as traps will be based on them and they can get tricky.
You can certainly do this from your screen by clicking on the images above, yet I encourage you to print them out and head to the “START” line with a pencil. Depart on Route Instruction #1 and enjoy the adventure!
Send me an email at maprallies@comeroadrallywith.us. I would love to get feedback from you on these rallies and this column. I have heard of various rallyists having archives of these, and I encourage you to share them with us!
