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Day 53
22. June
2000, Kamloops to Banff
In the
morning we are greeted by a group of women supporting "Doctors Without
Borders" who especially baked some cookies for us. So the morning
begins pleasant, but we are soon faced with another test section. The
road is muddy and very slippery but Sami manages to drive the circuit
in a good time with three minutes. The Mustang finishes with two minutes,
so he is getting one minute closer to our rank. Yves and Arlette from
France are not so lucky. They have been going very well until now: With
their experience having driven Paris-Dakar and their wonderful-going and
strong Peugeot, they were in second place. Today, they slid out of an
elevated curve, probably underestimating it. The car fell about two metres
on the ground and stayed in vertical position. The passengers got no injuries
and after they pulled the car up on the street again, it was still running.
But they lost two hours missing the time checks, so the top-ranked cars,
apart from number one, move up one rank. It is unfortunate to win a rank
under those circumstances but a major aspect of rallying is how much risk
one is prepared to take for his car. We have always had a low-risk strategy,
trying to get no damage to our car and of course avoiding all risks to
health. In a long-lasting rally like this, the strategy seems to pay off
as we are currently third.
The shock of seeing Yves and Arlette go off probably distracts us a bit
from the rally business. So in Falkland, we suddenly find that we took
a bit of a too long break. Kaya did not watch the time closely (a mistake
he won't do again so soon), so we end up rushing from Falkland to 3 Valley
and we just make our minute with eight seconds to spare in 3 Valley. Eight
seconds in 140 km! I think anyone can imagine how much more tense and
stressful this section was for us than the one before. Especially with
all the traffic, construction work, trucks and RVs, double lines and police
everywhere.
Afterwards, we have a relaxing drive through the Rocky Mountains in the
rain. Passing through many national parks, we almost run out of fuel at
one point. Petrol stations have been rare in the Yukon, but recently they
have been very frequent. On the road through the Rockies, they were again
100 kms apart. We then pass the Great Divide between rivers flowing to
Atlantic and Pacific Ocean and enter the state of Alberta to finally arrive
in Banff after a long, exciting day.
| TC 182: Kamloops OUT |
8:
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17 |
|
| TC 183: Falkland Start |
9:
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32 |
72.10 km |
| TC 183: Falkland Start (one minute countdown) |
9:
|
33 |
|
| TC 184: Falkland Finish |
9:
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52 (three minute penalty) |
22.75 km |
| TC 185: 3 Valley Gap IN |
11:
|
52 |
140.47 km |
| TC 186: 3 Valley Gap OUT |
12:
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52 |
|
| TC 187: Banff IN |
17:
|
22 |
316.06 km
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Overall 1 hour 19
minutes penalty
The
official results can be looked up on this website
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A rest before
the Falkland Test
19 minutes of
Falkland make the car more dirty than two and a half hours of Torugat
pass in Kyrgyzstan. It is a good thing we had our wiper repaired
yesterday in Kamloops, otherwise the navigator would have seen nothing.
When you are
in a hurry, this is the last thing you want to see: Construction
work. Even when it is just one truck standing on the lane, they
regulate the traffic for half a kilometre. Letting only one direction
pass, letting the other direction wait for several minutes. We had
to stop four times from Falkland to 3 Valley, losing maybe 10-15
minutes.
Rain in the
afternoon washes away the worst mud
Crossing the
Rocky Mountains
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Falkland: as
if the rally officials had specially ordered it, the road was extremely
wet, muddy and slippery. Gravel is not so bad after all.
In the town
of Falkland we are welcomed by locals. They are so friendly that
we forget about time and suddenly find ourselves in a rush.
3 Valley: Great
relief that we made this normal section (no test) with eight seconds
to spare.
Ed with his
240-horsepower Mustang, Justin looking out of the window (both from
Ireland). They are only four minutes behind us now, so it won't
take too long before they overtake us, if they continue running
as well as they do now.
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