Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good, particularly when you set up a Sports Car Club of America sanctioned road rally that you hope will attract at least as many cars from non-SCCA clubs as members of your local region. As it turns out, what might be considered the least likely car club that one might expect to dominate such an event swept all the top trophies!
Two important things, unknown to this Rallymaster until arriving in the tiny northeast Oklahoma town of Avant on Sunday morning on September 19, 2021, came to light shortly after arrival. The most telling one was how much an impact a $500 contribution to the Avant Volunteer Fire Department is likely to make. Until Fire Chief Morgan Sweeney showed me around their fire station, I had not realized how much damage had been done to the entire town by severe flooding in May earlier this year (this was on top of significant damage in 2019). The monetary contribution, approved by the Northeast Oklahoma Region SCCA Board of Directors earlier in the week, will be put to good use repairing and renovating the extensive flood damage done the fire station. Without a doubt, every penny makes a difference! If you are interested in knowing how inundated the town got, search the Internet for “flooding in Avant, Oklahoma.” There remain many news reports of the damage done to the town that fateful day.
The other surprise was the bicycle race being staged in Avant, the morning of the same day scheduled for the SCCA rally! Fortunately, for both events, the bicycle race was wrapped up before the classic Chevys, an Italian Dodge, a pickup, some contemporary commuter machines from Korea and Japan, and even a vintage Porsche 911 took to the same roads through Barnsdall (aka Bigheart – the home of an oil well pump jack on Main Street) and then on to Tulsa.
The Average Joe Rally 2021 route covered most of the final 70 miles of the course used for the bicycle part of the Tulsa Iron Man Triathlon competition in June of this year. The slightly modified rally route covered rural, twisty, hilly tarmac, two-lane state highways, some four-lane limited-access highways, and many miles of rural, suburban lanes. The last meters of the rally sent crews onto a chunk of Tulsa’s Inner Dispersal Loop (IDL) before cruising through some vintage Tulsa residential streets to arrive at the finish – the Route 66 Cyrus Avery Centennial Plaza parking lot. Atop what River Parks Criterium bicycle competitors have come to know as Cry Baby Hill, the finish location was the “one and only” rally checkpoint and the scene for the trophy letting.
Although invitations extended to the Alfa Romeo Club, Miata Club, SCCA, and other local gearhead organization members, the Tulsa Chapter of the Antique Automobile Club of America (AACA) swept ALL the top placings Sunday afternoon! Not only were there more AACA members involved with the event than any other club, yet the President and Vice President of the Tulsa Chapter AACA tied for first place in their classic Chevys! This accomplishment is all the more noteworthy since each driver teamed with their wife to navigate – something the road rally community typically strongly recommends against – but claimed identical First Place plaques despite the risk to marital bliss!
Congratulations are certainly due to Betty & David Turner from Bartlesville and Debbie & Clyde Harding from Sperry, Oklahoma, for driving their 1968 Chevrolet Chevelle and 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air to complete the tour and take home the championship hardware! The officially unofficial Club Participation trophy will be added to the awesome car and memorabilia collection at the Cooper family museum/shop near Broken Arrow, where the AACA monthly membership meetings happen.
My thanks to NEOkla Region Road Rally co-chairman Dr. Bob Strattan and gearhead friend Jason Tollison for helping set up, pre-check, sweep and score the event. Thanks to Mary Jane Halley for volunteering her accountancy’s (Halley, McDaniel & Cuite, PLLC) printing facilities to crank out copies of the General and Route Instructions. And lastly, thanks indeed, to the teams who entered, arrived in Avant and rallied with us. It was a truly eclectic mix of automotive implements that tackled the course. Thanks to their entry fees added to the $500 contribution from the NEOkla Region Sports Car Club of America, the Avant Volunteer Fire Department will be adding over $700 to their reclamation kitty.
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And now, for that old Paul Harvey line, “And now for the rest of the story…,” the morning after!
It turns out that the laptop and other issues that delayed handing out trophies at the Cyrus Avery Centennial Plaza parking lot caused those results to be in error. The good news is that things have worked out such that everyone got the trophies they would have received had Dr. Bob’s laptop not crashed.
As it turns out, the Jenks Class of 1980 Chorus mates Mary Jane Halley and Connie Rudd claimed first place in the KIA Niro Hybrid that got 53 MPG covering the course! Due to MJ’s affiliation with this Rallymaster, they did the honorable thing for the sport and removed themselves from the final rankings. While anyone attending the several meetings I visited last week got more hints about the course than I shared with my wife, there is a lot to be said for avoiding any “hint” of conflict of interest. We don’t want to welcome “keyboard warriors” that don’t know “the rest of the story.” Or maybe I’m just overly paranoid about such BS.
Here are the final standings after Dr. Bob’s laptop was up and running:
Once all computations had been re-checked and corrected, the final results looked like this:
1 Halley/Rudd – KIA Niro
2T Harding/Harding – 57 Chevy Belair
2T Turner/Turner – 68 Chevelle
4 Berryman/Aguilar – Subaru
5 Alexander solo – Corvette
6 Tucker/Robertson – Honda Pilot
7 Cammuso/Cammuso – Dodge Dart
8 Jones/Jones – Honda Accord
9 Stowers/McCleland – F150
10 Walker/Walker – Miata
DNF Fowler/Fowler – Porsche 911
Take the Halley/Rudd team out of the standings, and the final official results find each team listed above improving their finishing position by one. That left the two classic Chevys from the AACA tied for first – which was exactly who got first place trophies Sunday afternoon before we even knew that would be the final standing!
