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Powershift
Nov 23, 2009


slidebite posted:

+12, sunny, a little breezy but nothing crazy. Enough time to bring it out of hibernation and put on about 30k before dinner



Is everything really that dry there right now?

it's been warm here and everything is a disgusting slushy mess.

Luckily my favorite thing to drive has 4 wheels and windows, so i can drive it anyways :coolbert:

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ExecuDork
Feb 25, 2007

We might be fucked, sir.
Fallen Rib

Every hocky arena - especially the little community rinks - has heard this announcement:
"Would the owner of a ... uh... brown .... uh ... car? please go to the parking lot? Your lights are on. We'd announce the license plate, but it's covered in mud, too. I think it starts with a number? Not sure, sorry"

Nomex
Jul 17, 2002

Flame retarded.
There's still snow, but the roads are bone dry.

Seat Safety Switch
May 27, 2008

MY RELIGION IS THE SMALL BLOCK V8 AND COMMANDMENTS ONE THROUGH TEN ARE NEVER LIFT.

Pillbug
Every night I go out and chip a little more of the two inches of hardpack ice off the alley entrance next door.

Immediately after I go inside some moron always hits a full ABS stop directly in the middle of the pile of freshly broken up ice trying to leave the alley.

I need to build a more obvious pile next time.

slidebite
Nov 6, 2005

Good egg
:colbert:

Powershift posted:

Is everything really that dry there right now?

it's been warm here and everything is a disgusting slushy mess.
Oh yeah, absolutely. It's seriously bone dry - the only place where there is any evidence of snow is where it was piled. Roads are perfectly dry and safe for a bike, even residential roads, except for maybe some piles of sand in the dead spots of intersections, but as long as you're driving in the daylight it's fine.. although I'm not going to lie and say it's +15 every day because it isn't. I did see a couple golf balls getting hit at the course off the highway in Taber but I'm pretty sure it was just employees, it's not like it will be open yet.

To be fair though, we really haven't got much snow as is the norm. I think the biggest hit we got was a couple inches a few weeks ago. I literally rode my bike every month of the year for a couple of years now since I moved here in 08.

March/April tend to be the snow months although it's usually gone 24-48 hours later.

quote:

Luckily my favorite thing to drive has 4 wheels and windows, so i can drive it anyways :coolbert:


I love your car man. :cool:

GrantC
Nov 1, 2011

Read the friggin rulebook before you build your "racecar", stupid ricer.
Thanks for swinging by to chat Slung Blade & SSS!

SSS, hope you enjoy the cosmetic (junkyard) & hand me down Civic parts.

Slung Blade
Jul 11, 2002

IN STEEL WE TRUST

GrantC posted:

Thanks for swinging by to chat Slung Blade & SSS!

SSS, hope you enjoy the cosmetic (junkyard) & hand me down Civic parts.

Hey thanks for having us over, it was nice to meet you.



Also thanks to McTinkerson & crew (who I assume are still drinking too much to post and are still coming up with ridiculous new criteria) for having us over and organizing our Spring of Poor Decisions.

DrakeriderCa
Feb 3, 2005

But I'm a real cowboy!

Slung Blade posted:

Hey thanks for having us over, it was nice to meet you.



Also thanks to McTinkerson & crew (who I assume are still drinking too much to post and are still coming up with ridiculous new criteria) for having us over and organizing our Spring of Poor Decisions.

New rule: no pants

ever

Slung Blade
Jul 11, 2002

IN STEEL WE TRUST

DrakeriderCa posted:

New rule: no pants

ever

If you ever met me during april-october instead of the DEAD OF WINTER then you would know this is already a rule of my life.

:colbert:



Also I need opinions on this:
http://www.kijiji.ca/v-cars-trucks/medicine-hat/1972-lincoln-continental-sedan/1128654788?enableSearchNavigationFlag=true

slidebite
Nov 6, 2005

Good egg
:colbert:

Pfft. You don't wear shorts all year? Are you non-Canadian or something? :colbert:

If you're serious I literally drive by that area on average a couple times a week so I would be able to give you a 15 minute look over if you like.

That thing would be a whale, it is one of the few cars that would outsize Powershifts MK and it would be fantastic with some "MAYOR" fender-flags.

McTinkerson
Jul 5, 2007

Dreaming of Shock Diamonds


slidebite posted:

That thing would be a whale, it is one of the few cars that would outsize Powershifts MK and it would be fantastic with some "MAYOR" fender-flags.

I'm seriously trying to acquire this at the moment, however would not be upset if another goon grabbed it.

http://www.kijiji.ca/v-cars-trucks/red-deer/1988-caddy-on-bags/1136370145?enableSearchNavigationFlag=true

Also - new thread outlining future shenanigans incoming - just need a title.

Slung Blade
Jul 11, 2002

IN STEEL WE TRUST

slidebite posted:

Pfft. You don't wear shorts all year? Are you non-Canadian or something? :colbert:

If you're serious I literally drive by that area on average a couple times a week so I would be able to give you a 15 minute look over if you like.

That thing would be a whale, it is one of the few cars that would outsize Powershifts MK and it would be fantastic with some "MAYOR" fender-flags.



I am serious. Would you mind checking it out for me? If it's not a well-covered up basket case I'd kinda like it for what we're planning.


McTinkerson: bring back a jar of bitumen from up north for each team. "Alberta Transmountain to Tidewater Challenge"

slidebite
Nov 6, 2005

Good egg
:colbert:

Sure, get a hold of the guy and get your preliminary questions out of the way. If it passes your initial sniff test, make sure he's OK with me dropping by. I've got a room booked Weds night in Medicine Hat so I will probably be through Bow Island in the afternoon. PM me if you want and I'll give you my contact info.

slidebite
Nov 6, 2005

Good egg
:colbert:

Hey, any of you Calgary guys want to get together for a beer next Tuesday (9th)? I should have some free time in the evening after 7-ish. I think I'm staying at that new Hotel Clique just off Deerfoot near YYC. I think they've got a restaurant/lounge in it.

jonathan
Jul 3, 2005

by LITERALLY AN ADMIN
This is horseshit why don't you all move up to GP. I have garage, driveway, death proof on bluray, lick her sore around the corner with a microbrew tap.

McTinkerson
Jul 5, 2007

Dreaming of Shock Diamonds


Trans Mountain to Tidewater shakedown Grand Prairie trip in June?

slidebite
Nov 6, 2005

Good egg
:colbert:

jonathan posted:

This is horseshit why don't you all move up to GP. I have garage, driveway, death proof on bluray, lick her sore around the corner with a microbrew tap.
Grande Prairie is a good place to be from

F1DriverQuidenBerg
Jan 19, 2014

I could swing by for a couple of drinks.

I've never been to GP, what would I expect if I went there?

Timmy Cruise
Jun 9, 2007

jonathan posted:

lick her sore
:stare: never heard that one before....

So I guess there's a dude running a rally X south of Regina that I'm going to try to make.

I was losing motivation on doing anything with the 'project car' BMW that I've had for a while; being that autocross has been sparse here in Saskatoon there has been no Rally X here at all I was thinking of dumping it on Kijiji. With at least a couple of events I can hopefully make I'll get some use out of it at least.

It looks pretty good from outside (for a $1K BMW):




Underneath the unassuming exterior, though, there were a few surprises to be had:



It's a sunroof car and of course it had leaked so the interior is now in the trash. Of course as I was doing this discovered the custom harlequin interior. Interestingly, there are no huge accidents reported and it has an SK safety sticker from 04 so either it didn't get caught on inspection, the repair method was OK with the inspector, or it was fixed under the table as cheaply as possible. I am thinking of putting in some reinforcement, but I have no experience doing this so any suggestions would be helpful. (I do have a welder, etc.)

I'm in the process of pulling and wiring not essential to actually driving the car. Less supperleggera more in hopes of reducing the risk of it doing that burny thing that Italian cars sometimes do.

So, that leaves me with a car that is worth exactly gently caress all but is kind of a hoot to drive. Somehow I lucked out and got a winter package car so it has an LSD rear end and the M50 has some decent grunt. Being that it also started life as an automatic, it comes with the 3.91 ratio. I've since put in a manual from a 94' 325 as the auto was pooched. If you know your BMW tranny's this one came with a 1:1 5th gear, so highway isn't exactly ideal with ~3300 rpm or something at 100 km/h. However, with it being such a pile I see it as a blank canvas. I.e. who cares about rock chips, scuffs, etc. Rattlecan paint job? gently caress yeah. Offroading? Why the hell not?

Future plans include HSS bumper with lights and a skidplate. Not sure on a lift kit yet - I have to do some research so I don't mess up geometry, etc .(at least not that much).

Timmy Cruise fucked around with this message at 03:32 on Feb 1, 2016

ExecuDork
Feb 25, 2007

We might be fucked, sir.
Fallen Rib
My tables!

But on-topic again, that's the car you put my pedals and some other stuff into, right?

QCMA are good people, if they're putting on an ice-dice at Kronau you should definitely go, you'll have a blast. There was some up-fuckery around ownership & access for that regional park, so they might have moved to a different frozen pond. Either way, it's good fun.

Timmy Cruise
Jun 9, 2007

ExecuDork posted:

My tables!

But on-topic again, that's the car you put my pedals and some other stuff into, right?

QCMA are good people, if they're putting on an ice-dice at Kronau you should definitely go, you'll have a blast. There was some up-fuckery around ownership & access for that regional park, so they might have moved to a different frozen pond. Either way, it's good fun.

poo poo, my bad. Should be better now. I always forget about that.

Yes, your pedals and shift knob live on. Forgot to mention that (and thanks again!)

I did go to one event at Three Flags with the Mazda2 which was fun. Haven't seen any winter stuff from them and I was visiting with family when Sports Car Olympics was on.

Seat Safety Switch
May 27, 2008

MY RELIGION IS THE SMALL BLOCK V8 AND COMMANDMENTS ONE THROUGH TEN ARE NEVER LIFT.

Pillbug
How the gently caress do you get red overspray on a silver car?

Timmy Cruise
Jun 9, 2007
That's just a reflection. If it's the front passenger fender you're looking at, of course.

F1DriverQuidenBerg
Jan 19, 2014

Is the Sports Car Olympics a pretty big event? It always gets mentioned whenever the TSD championship comes up, but I've never heard anyone's experience of attending.

ExecuDork
Feb 25, 2007

We might be fucked, sir.
Fallen Rib
I went to SCO in Regina four years in a row - 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013. It's always on Thanksgiving weekend, which does cut down on the attendance by out-of-towners; I live far from my family and Thanksgiving's never been a big deal to me so I went to toss my car around.

The overall format is always the same: "Rally Cross" (note that term has different meanings in different parts of the world) Saturday morning, TSD rally Saturday evening, and Auto Cross at 3 Flags (~20km north of Regina) on Sunday. Maximum possible score is 1000 points for each event. For the cross events your score is based on your category-adjusted time; winner scores 1000, everybody else scores less based on how badly they did relative to the (adjusted) FTD. For the TSD, you lose 1 point for each second over or under time you are at each checkpoint; typically there are around 10 checkpoints over a course that takes about 3 hours to run.

I always made a point of attending all 3 events, thus even though I suck pretty hard I can't score worse than lowest-out-of-top-competitors; in essence, I cheat by throwing my car across dirt & gravel that the serious auto-x guys wouldn't touch with somebody else's ride (the number of Subarus that never see gravel is personally astonishing. What's the point of a "rally" car that never gets dirty?). In 2013 I came in 6th, which tells you there were 5 other drivers who participated in all 3. That minimum number is usually determined by the TSD. It's hard to remember, but I'm pretty sure in 2013 there were about 12 of us at the rally-x, 6 teams in the TSD, and around 50 competitors at the auto-x. Lots of people come out just for Sunday's auto-x.

My best place ever was 2011. I was the co-driver for one of the QCMA regulars in the TSD, and we came second. He'd bought a Saab 900 specifically for that weekend and despite a coolant leak, chronic overheating, and armed-and-angry farmers we did pretty well.
SCO 2011 TSD 14 by Martin Brummell, on Flickr

This is a shot from the 2012 rally-x. The driver of this little AWD hot-hatch (I cannot remember what that thing was, but it was pretty cool) is the same guy I co-drove for in the previous TSD. He'd scored some proper gravel tires from a "real" rally team and he just completely owned that track.
SCO 2012 Rally-X 6 by Martin Brummell, on Flickr

I need to go through my old photos and upload some more stuff. There's a lack of pictures from some of the events that I know I attended!

Funny story: the end of the 2013 TSD was about 50 km away from Regina, north up Highway 6. There was a 'riders game that afternoon, so there was a ton of traffic leaving Regina. For those who don't know, pretty much the entire population of Saskatchewan are foaming-at-the-mouth, imported-fruit-on-heads, batshit-crazy about the Roughriders and home games in Regina routinely sell out even in the regular season. The RCMP had set up a checkstop on Highway 6 in a little dip in the flat, flat prairie. They were checking people going both directions even though Regina-bound traffic was about 1/10th of the northbound folks. I still had my TSD number card taped to my door, and the cop gave me a funny look as I was rolling down my window. He started with the usual "Have you had anything to drink tonight, sir?" but moved quickly onto "What's this number 1 for?". I explained I had participated in a closed-course race on private land that morning (technically correct - that was the rally-x) and hadn't removed my number tag. He waved me through. When everybody got back to the pizza joint for the trophies and wrap-up, we heard from Car #6 how the cop hadn't even stopped them, just waved them through as soon as he saw the number tag. Car 2 had gone to the trouble of explaining, in some detail, the TSD rally. Football? What's that? I've got a checkpoint to hit...

\/\/\/ sounds about right. Thanks!

ExecuDork fucked around with this message at 05:22 on Feb 1, 2016

Seat Safety Switch
May 27, 2008

MY RELIGION IS THE SMALL BLOCK V8 AND COMMANDMENTS ONE THROUGH TEN ARE NEVER LIFT.

Pillbug
Looks like a 323 GTX.

Fun Riders story that other people love me telling and I haven't figured out why yet:

Couple years ago I was on the C-Train while we were hosting the Grey Cup. You guessed it, Riders fans in full battle dress hop on the train, going the wrong way from the stadium.

One Riders fan turns to the other, and excitedly yells: I'VE NEVER BEEN ON A TRAIN BEFORE

slidebite
Nov 6, 2005

Good egg
:colbert:

1500quidporsche posted:

I could swing by for a couple of drinks.
Drop me a line. There does seem to be a lounge there... and it will keep a middle aged guy from making a fool out of himself in the rooftop jacuzzi. Slung Blade is threatening to make a an appearance too.

quote:

I've never been to GP, what would I expect if I went there?
Alcoholism? Out of work oilfield workers and a burgeoning drug trade?

Seriously not a ton to expect to see or do unless things drastically changed in the past few years. It's truly a city to spend a night in on your way to somewhere else. I lived there for about 25 years total and was actually born there so I'm not unqualified to talk about it. I don't want to poo poo on it because it's really not an awful city, but it's not cultured as much as say, oh, Red Deer (yeah) and has probably has even more rednecks per capita.

I suppose there are some out-doorsy things to do that involve heavy drinking and 4 wheel driving if that floats your boat in the area, but the city itself and immediate area is pretty limited for redeeming qualities. The highways to and from are certainly not as scenic as say, the Crowsnest or Southern BC.

There are some fine folks that live there though, forum members included of course.

DrakeriderCa
Feb 3, 2005

But I'm a real cowboy!

Seat Safety Switch posted:

Looks like a 323 GTX.

Fun Riders story that other people love me telling and I haven't figured out why yet:

Couple years ago I was on the C-Train while we were hosting the Grey Cup. You guessed it, Riders fans in full battle dress hop on the train, going the wrong way from the stadium.

One Riders fan turns to the other, and excitedly yells: I'VE NEVER BEEN ON A TRAIN BEFORE

Oh Saskatchewan

:canada:

jonathan
Jul 3, 2005

by LITERALLY AN ADMIN

slidebite posted:

Drop me a line. There does seem to be a lounge there... and it will keep a middle aged guy from making a fool out of himself in the rooftop jacuzzi. Slung Blade is threatening to make a an appearance too.

Alcoholism? Out of work oilfield workers and a burgeoning drug trade?

Seriously not a ton to expect to see or do unless things drastically changed in the past few years. It's truly a city to spend a night in on your way to somewhere else. I lived there for about 25 years total and was actually born there so I'm not unqualified to talk about it. I don't want to poo poo on it because it's really not an awful city, but it's not cultured as much as say, oh, Red Deer (yeah) and has probably has even more rednecks per capita.

I suppose there are some out-doorsy things to do that involve heavy drinking and 4 wheel driving if that floats your boat in the area, but the city itself and immediate area is pretty limited for redeeming qualities. The highways to and from are certainly not as scenic as say, the Crowsnest or Southern BC.

There are some fine folks that live there though, forum members included of course.

If you lived in Vancouver all your life like I did, GP is loving awesome!

Slung Blade
Jul 11, 2002

IN STEEL WE TRUST

ExecuDork posted:

and armed-and-angry farmers


Spill the details, you can't just drop a bomb like that without context.

Timmy Cruise
Jun 9, 2007

Seat Safety Switch posted:

I'VE NEVER BEEN ON A TRAIN BEFORE


Execudork posted:

armed-and-angry farmers

:canada: Saskatchewan indeed.

The only time I've been to GP was driving through it on the way to Powderking. It's actually a lot bigger than I thought - if it was in SK it'd be the 3rd largest city.

jonathan
Jul 3, 2005

by LITERALLY AN ADMIN

Timmy Cruise posted:

:canada: Saskatchewan indeed.

The only time I've been to GP was driving through it on the way to Powderking. It's actually a lot bigger than I thought - if it was in SK it'd be the 3rd largest city.

I believe it's Alberta's 3rd largest.

slidebite
Nov 6, 2005

Good egg
:colbert:

GP has certainly grown up from when I first remember it as a little guy it's certainly not the 3rd largest.

Lethbridge and Red Deer are for sure larger. I am pretty sure Ft Mac and Med Hat are larger too.

Probably 6th or 7th.

Is there any current pop references? Wiki and google seem to be referring to 2011/2012.

ExecuDork
Feb 25, 2007

We might be fucked, sir.
Fallen Rib

Slung Blade posted:

Spill the details, you can't just drop a bomb like that without context.

2011 SCO TSD
Start: Indian Head, SK.
End: Buttfuck Nowhere, SK

Dramatis Personae
SCO 2011 TSD 2 by Martin Brummell, on Flickr
Faithful, leaky Chariot of yours truly. The yellow jug, intended for diesel, was our water supply for the leaking engine coolant system. We put more than 20L of water through that radiator over the 4 hours of rallying and misadventure. The lightbar was hooked up but the connections were loose so it only flickered a bit then died when we used it.

SCO 2011 Rallycross 5 by Martin Brummell, on Flickr
This car belonged to one of the organizers, and was driven by long-time members of the QCMA. I don't think a more obviously "RALLY CAR! RACE CAR! I DRIVE LIKE AN rear end in a top hat!" vehicle could be driven on public roads, even in extra-lax Saskatchewan.

SCO 2011 Rallycross 11 by Martin Brummell, on Flickr
The eventual winner of the TSD, a registered-for-3-days, cobbled-together-with-stolen-parts Eagle Talon TSi. There was some debate about the working status of the AWD system; it might have been running in 3-wheel drive. The key to victory was apparently to paint major engine components different bright primary colours. From memory, the head was yellow, the block was blue, and the intake manifold was green. I think there was some red splashed on the alternator, with overspray onto various hoses.

****
We were car 3 (if I recall correctly) and set off 6 minutes after the hypothetical "Car Zero"; our Start time was sometime around 4:00pm, I think. Driving on dusty gravel roads directly into the setting sun is a challenge in itself, which might have something to do with the typically low turnout at SCO TSD events. That, and the well-known history of vehicle damage and the rarity of high-octane gasoline in rural Saskatchewan. In 2010 (the previous year and my first time in a TSD) I was co-driver in a car that nearly went off the only goddam cliff in the entire province (no pictures, sadly. Just imagine endless inky blackness and your headlights disappearing into the void; one of our front wheels was touching only sky).

The organizers of the event had assured us that everything we were doing was quite legal. The RCMP had been informed of the TSD's route and rules (NO SPEEDING! unless you really have to), and all roads were public highways. The TSD had several timed stages, separated by no-checkpoint transit stages. Checkpoints consist of an organizer sitting in a hidden location with a stopwatch and a notepad, and sometimes a camera. The rally route is very convoluted, and crosses over itself in some places. A checkpoint can move from say, position 1 to position 3 in about 10 or 15 minutes after the last car passes CH1, while it might take the competitors more than 45 minutes to reach CH3. We went up and down the walls of the valley of the Qu'Appelle River, while the checkpoint vehicles could zip along on the paved highway that runs along the valley floor.

SCO 2011 TSD 9 by Martin Brummell, on Flickr
A typical checkpoint.

About an hour into the event, Elvis (my driver) and I had had to stop twice already to add water. By this point, having figured out the problem (massive leak from the expansion tank) we were pretty good at it - Elvis would announce the engine was dangerously hot, we'd pull over in a cloud of dust and he'd pop the hood release. I'd grab the jug from the back seat while he lifted the front-hinged hood and one of use would use my hoodie as an oven mitt and open the cap on the expansion tank. Then we'd pour in as much water as we could, and throw everything back together. Typical sub-$1000 car on-the-fly maintenance, I think.

Elvis is a magnificent driver, and every corner was taken in full four-wheel-slide mode with the front wheels of our little Saab valiantly trying to find grip in the pea gravel. I just kept my head down and tried to ignore the sloshing sensation of my organs sliding in concert with the wheels. We ended up in front of Car 1 and Car 2 somehow, and were flying along under the assumption that our water stops were keeping us behind where we should be, and that the cars that were supposed to be in front of us were just hopelessly lost.

We came upon a 5-way intersection, with one way less obvious than the others - the way we were supposed to go, a hard right. We slid into a farm yard, the "slight right" of the intersection, realized our mistake, reversed back into the road and took off down the weedy track.
SCO 2011 TSD 24 by Martin Brummell, on Flickr
The weedy track.

SCO 2011 TSD 19 by Martin Brummell, on Flickr
The roads we had already driven on had included some probably-not-really-public parts, like a (pointless) detour into a fallow field a few kilometres back.

As we realized we were entering a farm yard, I looked up and noticed the (presumed) landowner standing by his truck, with a couple of dogs. He looked at us and I probably waved or something, but I don't know if he could see that. I'm sure he saw a very dirty white Saab with a set of rally lights and a number on the side slide into his yard in a cloud of dust, then back out at high speed before slewing into a 45-degree reverse and leaping off southwestwards.

That track deteriorated from what you see in that picture down to just a pair of ruts between hedges, then turned hard right into a strip of dirt along the edge of a hay field; at this point, our wheels were on grass rather than dirt, though the ruts were clearly visible. I think the speed instruction was down to about 30km/h, and we bounced and rattled along until Elvis announced another spike in engine temperature. There was nowhere to pull over, so we just stopped and hopped out. As we were pouring water in, I heard a vehicle approach and I stepped around to wave the driver past us - I had guessed it was one of the other competitors, perhaps the missing Car 1, and they should just carry on around.

It was the farmer, driving up at high speed and sliding to a 4-wheels-locked stop within kissing distance of our rear bumper. He was halfway out of his cab while he was sliding to a stop, clearly very agitated and screaming a string of profanity at us. Elvis kept his head down and poured more water past the exploding steam coming from the front of the Saab, and I activated Emergency Diplomacy Mode (i.e. frantic lying).

Among his outbursts ("FUCKIN' gently caress! gently caress gently caress loving HELL GODDAM gently caress!") I gathered that he was of the opinion that we were tresspassing on private land, sharply in opposition to my own opinion that we were on (poorly maintained) public roads. There was also something about "Goddam racecars! Dangerous! Reckless! Going way too fast!" (expletives deleted). I decided to focus on the racecars thing because I didn't think I could convince him this was actually a public road and that I could probably get away with an apology and a dumb-city-slickers routine regarding land ownership. Just as I had him (mostly) convinced that we were not, in fact, racing and instead were engaged in a navigation exercise (technically correct is the best kind of correct), and something about testing a new GPS unit (the speedo in the Saab was iffy, and the odometer was completely broken, so we were using my GPS for those functions), Car 1 showed up.

Car 1 was that yellow Neon, the OBVIOUS racecar, and they were desperately trying to get back in front of us because they were at least 2 minutes off their checkpoint times (at 1 point per second, out of 1000). They came screaming up, half-airborne on the deeply bumpy grassy rut, and slid sideways around us. They basically drifted around the truck and paused right next to us, windows down (and music blaring) to see if we were OK.

Uh, yeah, thanks guys. I had this, until you decided to show up. Elvis waved them on, they glanced at the angry farmer, and took off.

Elvis slammed the hood down and I knew that was my cue to jump back in and take off. Hopefully we'd get out of there on our damaged engine and not get lynched by this guy. I thought we stood a good chance of getting away with him just giving up and having his own private aneurism, but who should come screaming in, completely slideways? Why, that Talon, of course! Did I mention the driver was the walking stereotype of a homeless drug-addict? Blue hair, ripped jeans, spiked leather jacket, pierced nose, and driving like he stole it (he did, kinda - to get it road worthy they had literally stripped parts from a neighbour's Talon the night before). I think the farmers face was cycling through their engine parts colour-scheme.

Talon: "Need a hand?" :v:
Me: "NO! GET THE gently caress OUT OF HERE! GOGOGOGOGOGGO! gently caress!" :suicide:
Farmer: "RAAAAAAARRRRR gently caress gently caress RAAAAAARRRR ARGGGHH!!!!" :argh:

And we were off!

The track widened and we eventually turned onto a proper Saskatchewan grid road (nice wide gravel, regularly maintained all year round) and finished the stage where that grid road intersected the paved highway on the valley bottom. There was a checkpoint there, that same grey pickup in the picture above, and the driver was the main TSD organizer. We stopped to tell him of our adventures, and he reiterated that every road (and road-like patch of scraped ground) we were on in this TSD was public. Then he said he'd handle it if the farmer showed up.

We thought that was the end of it, but at the pizza & trophies session that evening we heard about what happened at one of the checkpoints. Around the same time we had been talking to the grey pickup, an angry middle-aged man in a pickup truck had accosted the couple in their minivan acting as a checkpoint. They had just finished marking down the details for the last car to go past them and were taking a bit of a break before heading back - that was their last checkpoint of the day. They were parked on the side of a nice, wide grid road, clearly on public land and not in anyone's way, when this guy blocked them in, nose-to-nose and started screaming at them. They had no idea what the hell was going on, and before they could work out why this guy was losing his poo poo all over them, he picked up his rifle off the bench seat and started waving it around. They way they told the story, he never actually pointed the gun directly at them, but he came pretty close. Lots of raising it up, pointing it out the window (at the sky, or across the road) and a tremendous amount of angry shouting. Eventually he got tired and departed, and they returned to town.

The guy who had been yelling at me might have said something about a gun, I don't know, most of what he was saying was completely unintelligible because he was having a complete meltdown while hanging halfway out the door of his truck.

I never heard any follow-up, so I don't know if the gun-waver was the same guy as had been yelling at me, or somebody else. When I questioned out loud the angry farmer's assertion that we had been driving recklessly - Elvis and I never got higher than 100km/h on a road with a 80km/h limit - I got to hear about how the winner had achieved their remarkable feat. Apparently, when they realized how badly wrong they had gone they decided to really see what that clapped-out turbo was capable of. Something about 175km/h at sunset with essentially zero visibility.

1500quidporsche posted:

Is the Sports Car Olympics a pretty big event? It always gets mentioned whenever the TSD championship comes up, but I've never heard anyone's experience of attending.
It's great fun! You should go! Everybody should go!

EDIT:
2nd Place TSD SCO 2011 by Martin Brummell, on Flickr
Elvis and I were awarded Silver Medals for our TSD run.

ExecuDork fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Feb 1, 2016

Slung Blade
Jul 11, 2002

IN STEEL WE TRUST

Well that was amazing, thanks!

Seat Safety Switch
May 27, 2008

MY RELIGION IS THE SMALL BLOCK V8 AND COMMANDMENTS ONE THROUGH TEN ARE NEVER LIFT.

Pillbug
I laughed until I cried.

I love me some TSDs.

F1DriverQuidenBerg
Jan 19, 2014

I feel like you aren't a veteran TSD rally team until you have an angry farmer story.

What diffused the situation for us was really saying that we were lost as gently caress and naming a major road from the next transit stage. Guy calmed down alot after that and also gave us directions.

slidebite
Nov 6, 2005

Good egg
:colbert:

ExecuDork posted:

2011 SCO TSD
Start: Indian Head, SK.
End: Buttfuck Nowhere, SK

Dramatis Personae
EDIT:
2nd Place TSD SCO 2011 by Martin Brummell, on Flickr
Elvis and I were awarded Silver Medals for our TSD run.
haha
That was great

slidebite
Nov 6, 2005

Good egg
:colbert:

https://www.gcsurplus.ca/mn-eng.cfm?snc=wfsav&sc=enc-bid&scn=214251&lcn=360148&lct=L&srchtype=&so=ASC&sf=ferm-clos&lci=&str=1&ltnf=1

I wouldn't lose money on this would I?

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ExecuDork
Feb 25, 2007

We might be fucked, sir.
Fallen Rib
I saw the gc-surplus link and got excited, but that has to be the most boring truck in the world.

Buy it. You'll lose nothing, and later you can tell us how those auctions work so we'll do well buying something interesting.

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