I need to find some good roads [....] There're lots of good ones up in the mountains, but that's hours away.

We're really lucky here with the mountains being pretty jammed up against the coast (I think it took us like 1:15 to get to our start Saturday AM). Oregon, Washington and British Columbia are also lucky to have a whole lot of "middle of nowhere" such as when you get over to the east side of the mountains in WA/OR or almost *anywhere* up in BC.

What have you done to modify your car for rallying? And what do you do about damage?

As it stands, we have neither the gobs of cash or reflexes needed for stage rallying, so what we do are TSD (Time-Speed-Distance) rallys, where things like roll bars are not required and you stand a good chance of getting the car home in one piece (it doesn't always work out that way).

TSDs are run on public roads at legal speeds (more or less) so that insurance coverage is still in force. And TSDs come in different flavors, from "trap" rallies on pavement where the trick is to interpret and follow instructions correctly, to pavement touring rallies where precision is more of a factor, to gravel TSDs where maintaining a seemingly reasonable speed through twists and turns becomes the issue. The latter is what we've gotten most interested in, so-called "brisk" gravel rallies (in BC, these are generally Brisk++)

So the only damage to the car so far are some minor scrapes on the front spoiler lip and a fair size ding on the bar that holds the right lower control arm (where last November at the Totem Rally in BC I managed to drop the car at about 45 MPH on a fairly big boulder that was hiding in a fairly large slushed-over water hazard).

For many pavement rallies you need no equipment. Some touring rallies conduct basic safety inspections to comply with their club's insurance requirements.

For the many gravel rallies that require them I added:
- 10BC fire extinguisher (they usually spec 5BC or better)
- first aid kit
- tow strap
- reflective triangles (flares typically prohibited)

I should actually keep better track of all this, but things I have added or modifications I have made so far include:

- 4-position AGU fuse block for stereo, ham radio, rally comuter and driving lights.
- Littlite map light
- Hella FF1000 lights on a one-off light bar (something like this pretty much required for gravel night events, and I may add a 3rd FF1000)
- Alfa Club rally clock/odo
- Goodridge stainless brake lines and Super Blue brake fluid
- Slightly upgraded fog light bulbs (85W Yellorstars) and a relay to cut out DRLs if just fogs are turned on
- Kenwood D700A dual-band ham radio
- entrenching tool
- avalanche shovel
- foam pads (for kneeling/crawling on)
- torque wrench with wheel lug socket
- permanent mount recharging Maglite
- full-size spare
- 5 studded Nokian Hakka 1s on OE wheels for winter
- louder horns (Hella Supertones)
- rear diff skid plate (factory option)
- Alfa magnetic sensor on rear axle
- VSS sensor tap (at tranny)
- Empeg

Before The Road Not Taken, I'm adding a front skid plate (from Primitive) and a better back-up light tied in with the driving lights. After our attempt to use a piece of laptop-based rally computer software on No Alibi, I may bite the bullet and finally get a Timewise 798A. I bought a second glovebox from a wreck so I could hack that up into a permanent mount (bonus points for the WRX's easily removable glovebox).

Loren: So are you doing the whole Pacific Coast Challenge?

Well, we were going to go up to Coast-to-Coast on Vancouver Island, but we decided that there were too many other things to attend to. After No Alibi, I don't think we have to worry about a trophy anyhow (but that's not why we do it anyhow). So we'll just do TRNT, Night on Bald Mountain, Totem, and then the Winter Alcan in February (with maybe some Friday nioghters thrown in).

Oh, links! For TSD things, these are pretty good: Left, Right, Online! and Rally Central . I have to say that the Carolinas don't appear to have many rally links. Cherokee Trails Pro Rally a popular event up the road in Tennessee, but a search on "rally TSD Raleigh Carolinas" hasn't shown much yet, and the SCCA links for their TSD division shows mostly events in Virginia. This outfit says they do rallies, but their calendar doesn't show any. More research!