The winning car was launched off a cliff. The class-winning rental car was teamed up with a “Bunch of Idiots.” This was no ordinary rally.
Lemons, the group known for low-cost endurance racing with a sense of humor, also has a successful endurance rally series. Little known to most rally purists, they put on six or so events a year, each typically 3-4 days in length.
Their biggest gamble was the Alaskan I-Threw-A-Rod Rally, which ran June 30-July 4th. Limited to only 25 teams, our Team MAX felt fortunate to be one of only two Alaskan teams to compete. Primarily promoted within the Lemon Rally community, it sold out in days, with 17 teams on the waiting list. No car is more suited to long distances on Alaska’s long stretches of highway and rough gravel backroads than our Subaru Forester, so we left that car at home and drove our 1969 Austin Mini. The other Alaskan team, Team Meatloaf, drove a VW Campervan, towing half of a VW rabbit the whole way.
“Alaska will try to kill you,” the morning driver’s meeting began. This statement was good advice for the 14 teams that drove great distances to get to the start, some in some pretty-questionable automobiles. The other eight teams drove rental cars, some fairly mediocre at best. The meeting lasted approximately 20 minutes and might have been about being safe or something like that. No one was listening.
Route scoring was based on several factors. The route book listed 8-10 checkpoints daily to be located, photographed and posted to Instagram for scoring. Optional checkpoints were the “Ill-Advised Checkpoint — Especially If It’s Remotely Damp Since-There’s-No-Cell Reception-and-The-Road is Definitely Unpaved, Cratered, And Hilly” viewpoint outside of Homer and “Time Adding, Holy-Crap-Gotta-Cross-That-Bridge-To Get There Checkpoint” on McCarthy Road. We bypassed both of those. We did make it to the “Mildly-Inconvenient-Back-Road-Vaguely-Toward-the-Rally-Finish” to Independence Mine. Other checkpoints were more vague and required some research, such as “Find Uranus” and “Meet the Mayor of Talkeetna” (Hint, he’s a cat).
We visited many well-known and popular Alsakan destinations, Homer, Valdez, Fairbanks, and some lesser ones, such as the “tinfoil hats optional” locked gate of the H.A.A.R.P. (High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program) and another landmark that has been removed – nothing there but a dirt patch and some annoyed but polite neighbors. For those who had not yet connected the Rally name and the famous Sled Dog Race, the first checkpoint was at the Iditarod Cabin Museum in Wasilla.
So far, the Lemons rally does not sound all that different than any other 3-4 day event that your local car club might put on, so let’s look a little deeper, and here it gets, um, creative, as only Lemons can do. Organizers handed out a great number of points before the start of the Rally during the Vehicle Inspection. Our Mini Scored 150 points for being British, the second highest possible next to 250 points for Warsaw Pact, and 170 points for being 1960s. We scored poorly in the arbitrary “How Butt-Terrible Is It?” We, therefore, started the Rally in 4th place, 400 points behind the Team NSF, a 1987 K-car, which scored well in the 0-200 point “Hooptiness of this particular example” and the +/- 0-1000 “whatever we feel like” categories. “Extra Stupid Bonus Points” were awarded each day. We did not score any of those, but we did get a few points for Roadside Repairs.
Have I mentioned the themes? In Lemons, each Team has a theme and generally remains in character the entire Rally. We, playing with the rally title of I-Threw-A-Rod, dressed over the top in fishing gear and carried fishing rods, which we threw. Fake police were popular, with a team carrying “POLITE” graphics; another, with an actual retired cop car, “Law & Order SVT”; my favorite, the “Bear Patrol,” who were two Rangers traveling with two dressed in bear suits. The “Rust Cartell” seemed to be everywhere, but perhaps the most challenged Team was “Mental’s Unnamed, Doomed-To-Fail, Bad Idea.” Mental was a last-minute entry from the waiting list, who flew up and borrowed an AMC Eagle (one of two entered) on the condition that he could get it running. Remarkably, every Team made it to the finish.
The Team Max Mini placed 5th Overall, which is not bad for first-timers. We had an absolute blast. The Rally was a well-run (dare I say polished?) event. Would we run again? Well, let’s say we’ve already worked out a guaranteed-winning theme for the Rental Car category.
We appreciate Ric Quinonez capturing memories of our adventures on the I-Threw-A-Rod Lemons Rally and for their use in RReNews.
