Beginner’s Guide to Racing– Mountain Mille Road Rally

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Welcome back. Chris Stout here. In this episode we will be covering road rallying. There's a variety of different types of it. This is one form of it. My wife and I went through the vintage rallies, mountain melee I think is how it's pronounced. This last year in 2024 we'll be covering in this epis. So the founders of it, Rich and Gene Taylor, who are two amazing people, you'll hear a bit about their bio in just a second. We'll cover the different kinds of car classes, the sample of some of the cars there, what the rally book looks like and why. It's really kind of your totem for being able to get through an event like this. The hotels we were at, the additional stops we made, the people, the charities, and I'll end up with two shortened videos of what it was like to be on the road. So hopefully this will be entertaining and educational to you and maybe demystifying what road rallying is all about, or at least here in the United States. Not rally cars or anything going sideways on dirt roads, but really pretty curvy, beautiful areas. So here we go. This is the Corvette C8. If you've seen other episodes in this series, this is the car that has kind of been the Swiss army knife of doing everything. Land speed racing, road racing, you name it, just kind of everything. The overall tour of this we came from Wisconsin all the way out east to do the thousand miles and then did a couple of other things along the way back, stopped at the Corvette Museum and saw some friends, saw some family, etc. So for about a little over two weeks we were just in the Corvette and this is our luggage. It all fit in the front and back and was generally really pretty comfortable. So that tip of the hat again to not only the engineers for their ingenuity with being able to make a world class car, but then also the ability to make it a bit of a grand tour, a little bit of a gt. So this is my wife and I in one of our stops. So if you're interested in rallies, there's a variety of them out there. I have been a fan for the longest of vintage rallies. You can find out, I think gosh, years ago, before COVID they might have done three to four a year. Then Covid hit that kind of put a pause and everything. And now they're coming back with I think two a year. And they vary east and west, southwest, etc. So check them out vintagerallies.com and you can see some pictures from the past and Learn more about it, fill out their forms. I'll show you what that looks like in just a second. And also, one of the people we met, a big shout out to Greg Stanley. He published on YouTube experience the incredible 2024 mountain melee from Vintage Rallies. He did a great job of it. He's really good, much better than I am at editing, et cetera. And I'll have this in the show notes to this link. So highly recommend checking out his work and checking out that video. So when you come to their website, you come here. It's really pretty straightforward, very functional, and you can click on whatever activity, whichever rally it is that you're interested in, and it'll take you to that page. So for us, right now that the time I'm doing this is December 2024. We just did the rally in October, and they've already updated, so they've got a look back of what the 2024 rally was like. It was the 20th through the 25th. They've already got the application for doing their 2025 rallies. So I'd highly recommend that. And these are actual shots of actual people that were doing it. The fall was beautiful. Being out east, we were in Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland. And for us, you know, we drove out. So we went through Ohio and Kentucky and Illinois and Indiana, which is really beautiful. Beautiful roads and beautiful scenery and whatnot. So just in a variety of different kinds of really cool cars. I'll talk about this, list some of the people that got zeros. And zero is kind of what you want to go for, meaning that you just really kind of nailed the time. So I'll talk more about that and scoring and whatnot in just a second. This is the entry application. It's very easy. So the two that they're going to have next year is a May and fall, one spring and fall kind of car. I was always a little intimidated about it that I didn't have the proper car for it, since it was called Vintage Rallies. And personally, I didn't want to drive something that was 25 years old and be fearful of having it break down. But a couple of points about that. One is it does not have to be. You'll see in the cars in just a second something that's 25 years old or older, which was a great relief. However, they have what they call wranglers. You'll see some of their pictures in just a second. Who will do? Basically, they're amazing mechanics. They keep track of everybody. They shuttle your luggage. And it's really Kind of a wonderful, wonderful experience. So that's the appetizer. We'll get more to it in just a second. Tip of the hat to Rich and Gene Taylor. I forget. They have done, I think, something like 130 of these rallies over the years. They are both. Check out their bios on their websites. They are both amazingly accomplished people. Graduate Degrees, Ivy League, etc. Rich was managing editor for Car Driver for four years. Kind of right out of the box. They're both accomplished race car Dr. They do rehabs on buildings, they do restorations on cars. They've won just, you know, a variety of different kinds of design awards and art awards and writing awards, etc. They are just some of the most fun, interesting, accomplished people that you'll ever want to know and super, super helpful with this, doing this event or, and events. And the one that we were on was just, just spectacular. Had just a wonderful time. So, speaking of cars and car classes, this was the listing that we had. And this is not exhaustive. So when you have the rally book, which we'll do a deep dive into, it lists these different kinds of classes and it lists what cars are in those classes and it also lists who's driving the cars and their addresses and things like that, which is very nice. It also helps foster a sense of community and, oh, you're from this area. That's, you know, I'm, you know, live 20 miles from there, whatever. So that's, that's all very nice. And I will say, while this is a very impressive list of cars, there are a number of others that did not make it. There's a number of other Lotuses that were there and some other Ferraris and oh, my gosh, it was just really an amazing experience. So with the Wranglers, they have people that if you have a breakdown that they will see if they can fix your car right there and get it back on the road. There's never ever a rally that doesn't have some kind of, you know, hiccup or rally hiccup or not necessarily a full breakdown, but some kind of issue with a car. And that was, you know, that was the case with us too. And with the exception, I think, of one car, they're able to get everything going. So they've got, you know, complete set of tools and oftentimes spare parts. And it's just really, when you look at the variety and heterogeneity of these cars, it's sort of amazing that people can have that many available tools that they can Tote around with them and be able to, to do the work they do, have the knowledge and technical ability to be able to do that. So really, really pretty cool. So speaking of the cars, here's kind of a lineup of it. You can see in the, the lower picture on the right hand side, that's my 2023 C8 Corvette. And we all, you know, we get to line up in very nice places in these beautiful hotels. You can see the fall colors there. And again just really a who's who of vintages and varieties and makes and whatnot. This was and son vintage Ferrari and Porsche Speedster. So and they actually had, they brought all their own crew for two mechanics and stuff to take care of the cars. So a lot of the cars were open, had no tops to put up, which I can imagine some of those chilly mornings we had great weather, which was wonderful to not have rain or snow, but still pretty chilly in the mornings when we would start off. You can see a little frost and humidity there on the Ferrari and then here they are ready to go for the day. Obviously this Ferrari is not its first rodeo or rally for the one that we were on there. And this is kind of like a POV view from my car the first day. I'm following a 2024 Lotus Emira I think is how it's pronounced. There's a Dino, the yellow Dino to the right. There were two Dinos, you just don't see that. And the Dinos weren't even listed on the car classes that I just showed. Vintage Jaguar up there that has a forever open top, so to speak. And they've got teeny weeny little windshields. There's a late model gray Ferrari there to the right, a late model Ferrari, red Ferrari up front. I think that looks like a red Porsche. They're getting ready to pull out. So this is kind of one of the fun things you have. I think it's typically one minute gaps between the times that you start and it's just kind of a fun lineup and hearing all the cars start up in the morning and stuff, it's just, just really great fun for car people. So the rally book, as I mentioned, everybody gets a rally book. They are beautifully put together. They make a wonderful keepsake. The rally book, like I mentioned, had all the car classes and people's contact information, etc. And this is just kind of a general overview of the route instructions. So you turn the pages. This also just gives a kind of a historic perspective on this rally in particular. And it was this 19th time that they've run it. So they really pretty much know what they're doing. They don't do the same routes every single time, we don't stay in the same hotels every single time, etc. So this always will change. But it's always kind of neat to kind of see what has come before and to have a context for what you're going to be doing. Then they also very nicely. This is the Wranglers I was telling you about. The people that help keep you on track and make sure that you're in the right places, make sure that your cars are running and that everything goes well with that. So they are just a wonderful set of super helpful, super, super talented people. And then also not just that 19 years worth of doing the mountain ones but also just looking back, you know, year by year, just kind of again this gives you a flavor of what the cars were like. So this is just kind of an arbitrary. Sticking my thumb in it 2016 set of shots of the just beautiful, beautiful, impressive cars. And I just can't imagine we drove our car out there. I don't think very many, some people locally to the area drove their cars there and back but most of these cars got shipped there which you know, makes sense with the type of car they are. But nevertheless once the car shipped there there's a general expectation that you're going to be driving around on very narrow roads with everybody else and their bro 4,000 miles. So stone chips, bird droppings, bad drivers on you know, other people's part. The roads we were lucky. It seemed like honest to goodness it seemed like every single road we were on had just been paved 10 minutes before we got there. But of course you know, there's other things of speed bumps and potholes and you really gotta. There's very narrow, most of the way was very, very narrow. So you really got to not drop off an edge or you're going to have a, a bigger problem. So this is a some photo look backs from the 2020 and you know there's a Mercedes SL roadster. So just really cool people, cool cars, very interesting people love to talk about their cars and their experiences with them which is also for me and if you're into this very, very fun. So the book itself, there's emergency numbers right off the bat. Then the entrance that I mentioned and the entrance are there with what their cars are, who they are and what class their cars are in an overall schedule which you'll see in just a second and then each day is broken out by, you know, kind of where you're going with a map, with a little sketch of like where you're going to go, what you're going to see, historic buildings, historic sites, interesting people, et cetera, for the balance of the rally. So this is again kind of the overview of it. So we got there on a Sunday, everything, we got our kit and got organized and everything. We started in earnest then on Monday the 21st. And this just kind of gives you an overview of kind of what's what, how many miles, how many minutes. Some of the things are called transit. So when it's transit, it's not really a timed part of it. It's just getting your car from point A to point B to then do something that is indeed timed. So the total mileage with expectation of all of these was skoosh over a thousand. So 1024.1 miles with the average expectation for the minutes and mileage. And so let me just maybe unpack that a little bit now. What happens is, let me just. I don't know if I. It's the next slide. Yeah. So you get a kind of a very specific expectation of what's the day going to be like, which is also very nice just to know what to expect and how much free time you might have or how much, you know, behind the wheel time you might have or if you want to do something else, like to get in a workout or do some extra sightseeing or do some extra driving or what have you. So it just gives you kind of a nice overview this way and then the specifics. Like I mentioned, you have a map of where it is, where you're going and everything is just beautifully marked. Certainly you can use your navi, but it's not necessarily all that helpful because you don't. You might be going from point A to point B, but your navi is probably going to want to have you go in the most direct route and maybe regular highways, not all the back roads and things. So navi's really, I mean they're fine for the map, but not necessarily for doing a rally like this. So for example, stage one on the right hand side, you can see that you start off at zero. The expectation is you're going to drive around 47.3 miles. It's going to take you around 85 minutes. And if you average it out, it's going to be you're going to be doing around 43 miles ish per hour. So the point isn't to get there first, it isn't to get there last, it's to get there. It's Goldilocks just sweet spot, right? Being on time. So you could have, out of 50 cars, 50 cars could all get there. Nailed it at 47.3 miles, right on time. So some people, you know, again, there's traffic, there's stoplights in some places, you know, there's road construction in some places. So all of those things may slow down your competitors or may slow you down or you know, just the variety of things that can happen on a regular open road non racetrack. So my wife would go through these and sort of like check things off or have places that were, you know, might be in particular kind of tricky to find. And I tell you, this guide was perfect. So I would watch my odometer just as much as my speedometer. The downside for both of us is that the irony is you sometimes don't get a whole lot of sightseeing. I mean, if you've got a long distance, like you see like there's 18 miles or, you know, whatever in between these different points. There's some points where you have just some really nice open road driving or like 11.1 there, what have you. So then you kind of get to, you know, look around and enjoy the, in this case, fall colors, etc. So it really, I hope this demystifies it because I was always wondering, well, how does a navigator know, why don't you just plug it in your navi, etc. So this was very helpful. If you're kind of more map driven, you can kind of get an idea and a gestalt of what your day is going to be like and visualize it. But you really do need these point by point turns. You know, where do we turn and where are we and is it a right or left and how soon does this come up? But I have a little bit of time to get there. Or is it going to be turn, turn, turn real quick so that you stay on track and don't get lost. The hotels, we stayed at three hotels. The start and the end was the homestead, which is in Hot Springs. A beautiful historic property. A couple things about this too. One of the things that they also do for you, even though we had room in our car for our bags, people that had their car shipped or whatever, you know, probably had luggage that they brought on their flights. So everybody would have their luggage, whatever luggage they wanted taken from one hotel to another done. So you got little tags. They would come to your room, they would pick up your luggage and Then you would get to your next stop and magically your luggage would be there, which was really a nice convenience. So the homestead, the. We started at the homestead, we went to two other hotels. I'll show you in just a second. And then we wound back up at the homestead. So kind of starting and stopping at the same point makes a lot of sense when there's car delivery, etc. Etc. So and my goodness, the homestead, it's just gone through I don't know how many million dollar restoration within the last couple years before we got there. And it is just spectacular of the grand architecture of that day and just really kind of cool grounds. Thomas Jefferson had put in men's and women's hot spring bathing pools. And this is. They just. There's one now co ed, so to speak. It's outside. We went in it. It's really kind of neat. It doesn't have like. It's not like a swimming pool, it's not like a tiled bo bottom. It's not chlorinated. It's just these mineral springs and I think I forget there's a number of them that, that feed these. So that was just really a nice experience. It wasn't. It had an odor to it, but it wasn't stinky or anything like that. It was really fun. And then they also had this area where you could have the hot springs, mineral waters and go walk along these stones and kind of get a reflex massage, foot massage, warm water, zenish kind of thing, which was kind of cool. I don't think this dates back to Jefferson's time, but it was just really kind of a neat, interesting amenity and very much welcome after a lot of miles in the cars. It also has just a beautiful veranda out front with gosh, you know, like a little snack shop. You can grab a sandwich and a coffee and come out here, just grab a coffee and look at the fall foliage and just, just the beautiful mountains and just a wonderful peaceful kind of area to enjoy the beginning or the end of your day. The next stop then was to the Bavarian Inn in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. Really cool historic property that I think it started off as a house and maybe it's gone to being a boarding house and then finally to a hotel. Had a number of additions, newer buildings added onto it. This is ours. It had a fireplace. It also had been recently renovated, had a balcony. We got to look out upon the Potomac here and I think the other side of the bridge is Maryland. So just again, beautiful weather, beautiful scenery, beautiful circumstances and neat places. To be able to stay. And then those also offered opportunities to have meals with other people and get to know them, talk about them, their history, their backgrounds, their cars, et cetera. From there we made our way to Bedford Springs and the Bedford Inn. Again a humongous, beautiful historic property. Kind of all here diked out for fall. Right across from it is a. It's kind of really surrounded by a lovely, lovely park. My wife and I went for a hike there one afternoon when we'd gotten in a little earlier. And that just that felt great. Felt good to be in nature, felt good to be out there. The car felt good to stretch our legs and had lots of beautiful things to see and really nice hike, wonderful weather. It also this is just kind of right outside everyone's room on the wing that we were on. So they had these lovely rocking chairs and you could go out and see this. The balconies have like little white Christmas lights and the trees had lights and it's just beautiful in the evening as well. When you check in there is this historic flag that is huge. I mean it's just wall to wall street, floor to ceiling. And you can see that historically when it had first been put together, there had been subsequently three more states added to it. Which I just thought was one of the coolest things I had ever seen. To see a flag like that. And honestly such amazing condition as well too. And the interior architecture is just as impressive as the outsides. Just again a beautiful, beautiful property, beautiful grounds area and neat place to stay. Kind of in a sense these hotels, as grand as they are, are really kind of off the beaten path. They're near any kind of major airport hubs or big highways or anything like that. So it kind of makes them all the more. More charming. Historically there have been a number of weddings there. You can take a historic walking tour through it over the centuries, literally. And we found this one area where the bride and groom would sign their marriage certificate and there's little scratches in the glass case and they had a note there that the brides to be were would check to make sure that their diamond engagement rings were actual real diamonds to if it etched the glass. So cute little historic bits and things like that just really add to the richness of the trip. Also we wouldn't just go hotel to hotel. Oftentimes we had other kinds of stops. So this was a functioning, gosh, I think, you know, well over 200 year old grain mill that we got to stop at and it was functioning and we got to meet the proprietor and restorer and see this in action and just again lovely run by a water mill. Just beautiful. We went to a fellow's private property called and he has a barn called Rocking Horse Racing and he has one of the most impressive collections of vintage race cars that was just really kind of nice and special and again very homey. They baked. We had baked goods that morning and coffee and it just really made for a wonderful time of casual conversation and talking about race cars and whatnot and just being able to see some of these very rare machines that you don't see generally ever let alone in a collection like this. And also he had done some car restorations that had trophied at Pebble Beach. And this was one of the jigs, I guess you would call it, where he actually hand hammers out material to be able to create or recreate fenders and whatnot. So quite a skilled motorsports artisan as well. Not just having a neat collection. We also sometimes along the way would have various stops. This is one of the. It's a hotel but it also had a public restaurant in it. This is the interior and again nice conversations over just wonderful buffet meals and really had a nice time. This is looking out that's kind of cute. The parking lot here you've got know Ferraris and Porsches and whatnots of all ages and years. And then a Subaru of course they weren't rallying but very ecumenical parking lot with lots of interesting vehicles of all kinds. We also went to Gettysburg. My wife's family on her mother's side is from Gettysburg. So we. We took. Took kind of an afternoon off which is fine to do I should say as well. So if there's other places that might you have to a special interest in or whatever that are along the way. This was one of our stops, official transit stops so people could come there and see what's what. But since there was a familial history with the area, we went and visited my wife's grandparents homes and her parents home and her uncle's home, etc. So just really and again, beautiful day, beautiful fall colors and Gettysburg is a just really a very special and sacred kind of space. And the people, oh my goodness. Since we our time there was around Halloween. One of the fun things to do was at the final dinner and award ceremony was to do dressing up as your favorite car. So you kind of can't tell that's me kind of center in the middle here, left hand side looking at the camera. I have a stingray T shirt on as an homage to my Stingray Corvette that we were in. But just, you know, and everybody else had great sense of humor. Just again, a wonderful, wonderful time, wonderful events, wonderful venues, wonderful food and wonderful conversations. So next up will be the roads. But one of the things shout out to Hammer Nutrition. All the activities that I've done this year with the Corvette have been sponsored by Young Automotive and Hammer and the center for Global Initiatives. Hammer was very kind for me to be a brand ambassador in 2024. I got notification and just signed the contract that I am now a sponsored athlete that for them in 2025. So see what shows up around that. A lot of surprises I'm sure will come from there. The other thing is we actually had some pretty good times and some of the timed legs. So that won us this platter award, or trophy, if you will, which was kind of a nice, unexpected surprise. That's the backside of our rally book. So every time you pull in, you show them what your number is if you're doing a timed segment. So we were number 41. You can see there's a. I'm holding the license plate there. It didn't really. I didn't have the ability to affix it to the front of my car. A lot of people did. But generally you just kind of have it on your dashboard. So you get a number, rally number. That way you get your IDs and just a really wonderful kit of materials, too. A bag and Meguiar's car wax and microfiber towels and shirts and caps and coats and just really a lot of nice gear and memorabilia as well. So I hope this helps in terms of understanding what a rally is like or at least a rally like this, if you're interested. Again, big fan of vintage rallies. I have no sponsorship from them, so it's just saying it as being a fan with no payment included. And coming up next, the video will round out with two clips of some of the roads so you can kind of get a feel for what it was, an experience like with the point of view of the driver and the navigator. This was done again, tip of the hat to the engineers at Corvette. This is not shot via GoPro, but it's shot by the onboard system. And I could do a video overlay of what gear I was in, what speed I was in, what my RPM Revs were, what my G forces were, etc. To give you kind of a feel. And again, it's not a race. I wasn't doing like Road America or land speed. Racing on this, you know, you got to be very respectful of the speed limits and safety and whatnot. But the little bit of a problem is that the road noise and the revs of the car sometimes drowned out what I'm saying. So I apologize for that. I can't pull up my voice in car better than what it is at this point. So I hope nevertheless that that'll give you a little bit of a snippet and a feel and a taste for what it was like to be behind the wheel. So again, I appreciate all your support watching this. Check out the show notes below for the other videos. I also have a link to Greg's video that he did a beautiful job on on this rally as well. And thank you so much for watching. Please subscribe and check out the other content that I have. Drive safe.

This is not the official rally roads. We've done that a few days early on in the rally which is really enjoyable. But man, some of those roads even just getting out to where the rally

started

out in Virginia on the way in West Virginia we had a variety of roads that 55 miles an hour very very very twisty, very like no shoulder runoff, not even a white stripe and we just saw tons of trucks and all sorts of other cars just should not have been going fast, going fast on those roads. So this might be a sample. We've never been on this road before. It'll give you a general idea of what the We've also been very fortunate to have very good road conditions and these roads also are like very smooth. Look like they've been maybe newly paved and striped. Here's an example of some road work ahead and right now not a whole lot of traffic motions and generally that way Doris as well, which has been very nice. So I'll probably see if I can pause this and then come back once we get past the roadmap. You can also see the point of it too. This time of year is cooler, crisper weather. We've had just beautiful perfect weather. You can see that's probably the first clouds we've seen off of that mountain. Top of it shows that we've seen in a while but we've been very fortunate with dewy mornings. But in the 30s sometimes or so. Doing mornings and. High 30s, 40s, 70s up to low 80s in some places we've been at some point. I'm not sure where I'll drop this video, but I'll also have an overview of what our map course works. So I'm just going to do A little more curvy through here. Kind of feel. A lot of them are banked which is nice. The probably not maybe banking for a little bit for speed. But we also pursue that to get snow and ice off. Because we've been in areas where it's been like this and it is very snowy.

Nice.

See in the wintertime I suppose the worst part for me sometimes this dab of light in the sun because it's on timber, it's very low. And a lot of times with all direction east, heading east you can get the sunlight right in your eyes. That's no fun. But then a lot of these hills are applied to our houses because working ahead so you'll come up like a little hill top and just not be sure if you're going straight or right or left or if there's anybody cross the yellow bit. Yellow lines coming in. So that's probably the most exciting producing. It's also been weird to me. We did the tail of the dragon a while back and it's very, very strict on the 30 mile speed limit through there. But here it's been kind of crazy that the roads are 55 miles an hour. People do well over that vehicle city you wouldn't think would be the smartest to be doing that in. Okay, we're back with probably what will be the last road point of view. Our friend is up ahead of us is Mario. We're probably about 20 minutes outside of the hotel. Just came on a place that was similar to where we're at right now. This is George Washington National Forest. That is just a beautiful stretch. We've been through this before. We came out just a beautiful area. Nice roads. I think it's 8:55 through here too. So they're quick but very safe and forgiving. Just at this point. Sunlight and trees and colors and surrounds and everything just beautiful. So just kind of nice way to do a wrap up. You can't see behind us. But the fellow that red Ferrari was having some richer wood issues. But he's a bit behind us now and everything's okay with him. So anyway, this is last little bit of enjoyment for camera. Quite a few and this has been helpful if you're interested in rallying. And if you are, take a look at the show notes below. I'll have a lot of information on how to get in touch with the vintage rally people.

It.