A sports car rally is a formal automotive sporting event, a competition where the participants drive on public roads over a route carefully marked out by a set of printed instructions, driving at precisely defined but frequently changing speeds (always well below the legal limit). The driver and his navigator attempt to keep as closely to the posted speeds as possible using timepieces, their odometers, and some sort of calculator; in my day, a slide rule, printed tables or a Kurta mechanical calculator. Scoring is done by officials scattered along the route at checkpoints noting the exact arrival time of each car and crew and docking them points for how many seconds they are early or late. In fact, you’re docked twice as much for arriving early as for arriving late, to encourage people to drive safely. Checkpoints are usually disguised so that they are not visible until you are right on top of them. Of course, if you get lost or delayed, it may be necessary to drive faster than the assigned speeds to make up for lost time, so although a well driven rally is a pretty sedate and gentlemanly affair, one wrong turn or unexpected railroad crossing delay can turn it into a a real Roman chariot race. We always notified the local police when we threw a rally, and gave them the route. We also told the competitors we had done so, as well. If they got a speeding ticket, they had no one to blame but themselves.

This type of mathematically scored event is called a TSD (Time, Speed, Distance) rally. But we also used to organize more recreational events, called “fun rallys” which were scored by answering ridiculous questions on questionairres (How many stained glass windows in the church next to the saloon?). Other fun rallys included hare-and-hound type events, where lime bags thrown on the road from officials’ cars marked the turns (but not the directions) of the route, and many other games, puzzles and trick questions, treasure hunts, hide and seek, and any other fiendish tasks the rallymasters could devise to torment the competitors. A stop at the local roadhouse after the event gave the crews a chance to socialize, swap tall tales, and trophies to be awarded to the victors.

One year my club pulled out all the stops and held the ultimate event, the Great LSD (Loose Sand and Dirt) Rally; a grueling nighttime 130 mile, 4 hour trek down dark spooky country roads, and with a terrifying side trip into the fire control wilderness trails of the nearby National Forest. Scoring was conducted by answering questions about landmarks on the route, asking the crews to measure distances with their odometers, and simply to avoid getting lost. Some of the directions were deliberately ambiguous, but there was always a verifying landmark that allowed them to deduce they had made a wrong turn, retrace their steps, and get back on track. Those who guessed wrong the least came back with mileages closest to the official route length. The teams were scored by the answers to their route questions, the mileages on their cars, and their calculations of what the correct route mileage should have been. The roads we picked out were awful, but we made sure an Austin Healy Sprite could negotiate them, so they could certainly be handled by any other vehicle–providing you didn’t get lost.

The cars were lined up, given their instructions, a number painted on their windshilds with white shoe polish, and each crew was given two sugar cubes to suck on, to celebrate the name of the event. They were then sent off at precise 60 second intervals, so that it was at least theoretically possible to drive the entire route and never see any of the other cars, unless the route crossed or doubled back on itself.

What the drivers didn’t know was that there were two sets of route instructions: one for the even-numbered cars, and one for the odds. After a short, precisely measured odometer calibration leg, the route stopped at a T intersection where the even-numbered vehicles went in one direction, the odds another. Half the cars did the route clockwise, the other half counter-clockwise. If all the cars ran the route flawlessly, they would never see the cars before or behind them, but they would continuously be passing one car after another, heading in the opposite direction.

Most of the trip was on dark, lonely but well maintained country roads. Lots of turns and maneuvers, but they were allowed to legally build up a lot of spare time without penalty. But once they were led into the National Forest (from opposite sides!) they fell into a maze of narrow dirt trails and utter darkness. We had also taken the time to scatter about all sorts of clues and gotchas, ominous but meaningless totems, incongruous signage and other little surprises like mirrors off in the trees that would look like oncoming traffic, a cardboard skunk ape (Florida’s Bigfoot) and little reflectors that looked like the glowing eyes of very large beasts. There was plenty of real wildlife there too, as we learned while doing nighttime test runs while setting up the route. We, of course, had maps. The competitors didn’t.

In today’s era of expensive gas, security hyper-consciousness, and litigation paranoia, I wonder if people do this kind of nonsense any more.