The 2001 Thunderbird was going to be record setter. Fifty-seven entries with every class loaded with potential winners.

After watching the weather reports on Williams Lake all week where it was snowing and cold, we were prepared for a real winter rally. Larry flew into Portland from sunny Costa Mesa on Wednesday night, Valentine's Day. We spent Thursday finishing car preparations and then Friday morning we set out to meet Gary Webb and John Kisela at the 50th street exit in Seattle. As we neared Tumwater it began snowing and by the time we got to Seattle there was nearly six inches of the stuff on the ground. We exited at 50th and discovered that our CB could receive but not transmit. Somehow Gary figured out that the buzzing he was hearing was us and we latched up and jumped on the freeway for our journey North. About two minutes into the mission we came to a screeching halt. All six lanes were a parking lot. It seemed that about 20 of Seattle's residents decided to get up close and personal in the middle of the freeway. What a mess! After an hour of stop and go, mostly stop, we finely got past the carnage and once again began our journey North.

By the time we reached the border, the snow was nearly gone. Our dreams of a big time winter rally were fading. When we got to Cache Creek it was cold, around 10 degrees, but the roads were clear. We registered, had the car tech'd, plugged it in for the night and Larry read me a bedtime story.

Morning came and we were ready. For some reason the organizers like to wait to the last minute to hand out instructions. At the driver's meeting, a half-hour before the first car out, the instructions are handed out to all contestants. This means that car 1 gets less than a half-hour to prepare the instructions for the day ahead. Car 57 gets almost an hour longer.

The Mayor of Cache Creek flagged us off at 11:05.

Off we went to Deadman Vidette Road and the first regularity section. The clear gravel roads began giving way to snow covered lanes. We went gliding along , through the first control, and then as we rounded a bend and started an uphill section, there was an oncoming local wrapped around a tree just off the road on the left side. It was a full size American pick-up with a snowmobile under a canape in the back. A man was standing in the road waving us down, and as I pulled to the right to park and to avoid running over the guy, the car's right side tires were grabbed by the ditch gremlins that hang out in this part of B.C. The car slowly slipped to the right putting it solidly "in the ditch." I got out and talked to the man as a total of four teenagers climbed out of the truck. He had hit the tree sometime after car 4 had passed. Much to our relief, he gave no indication that his off course excursion was anything but his own fault. Looking at the car and seeing that 5 people were in it, I was amazed that the only injuries seemed to be minor bruises. The kids were pretty excited but seemed to calm down as other rally traffic came by and their attention shifted to watching the parade of unusual cars. The driver said that they lived close by and that relatives would come searching for them shortly. How he knew that I didn't ask. They then suggested that they try to push us back on the road. We were able to move the car back down the road about 30 feet placing us almost directly across from the crashed truck. The ditch however wasn't about to let us out of its grasp.

The right side of the car was pressed into the snow bank. This meant that in order to exit, Larry had to crawl over the center console. For those of you who know Larry , you know that we use a shoehorn to get him and the computer into the car. You can imagine how this must have looked. Where was the video camera when I needed it? Watching him extract himself and his size 13 boots surely would win an award on one of those World's Funniest Videos shows.

Soon a pick-up arrived with relatives of the crash victims. Lot's of hugging and "what if's." Later, one of the new arrivals suggested that he could pull us out if we had a tow strap. Viola, the tow strap gets to be used in the second consecutive rally. In January, it helped extract the Breazeale's from the mud bog on the Grand Canyon Rally. A quick pop from the tow vehicle and we were back on the road. We figured a 32.5 minute time dec. and off we went through one more control and on to the end of the Regularity

I should point that nearly everyone after us was affected somewhat by the accident scene. The crowd grew larger and at one time there were nearly 20 friends, relatives, and victims milling about, along with three additional vehicles. Rally cars were slowed and sometimes even stopped by the activity around the crash scene.

Anyway, we noticed that we now were faced with an 85 kilometer transit that included a ten minute pause. We thought that it just might be possible to regain our correct spot on the road if we hustled. Off we went and arrived at the start of the next Regularity with a couple of minutes to spare.

Since this is a public forum, perhaps we won't say much about this flight. I mean drive.

The roads were great, but not a lot of snow and we were thinking that this T-Bird would be light on the usual stories. Little did we know what was happening behind us. Other reports have detailed the exploits of the Rover so I won't go into that here, but let's just say they weren't alone in finding their way off the road.

At the Williams Lake halt for the night, Glen Wallace and David Squire were leading with 1 point, followed closely by Gary and John, and Jim and Christy Breazeale tied with 2points. We were next with 5 points. The organizers chose to discard the control after the accident as many crews were affected and it would have been difficult to be fair to everyone.

The morning came early and bringing with it a new blanket of snow. We headed out into a light snow fall that sometimes turned quite heavy. Our winter rally was here at last. Oh boy!!! As we climbed into the mountains the roads became quite twisty and quite deep in the white stuff. What fun.

The first section was challenging, one control was particularly difficult to reach on time. This section ended and we took a short rest and investigated an amazing suspension bridge.

This next section looked familiar. I recognized the road from last year. We would soon enter an acute left switch back, travel about a half mile into a second acute, this time to the right, executing both while climbing on a snow covered gravel road. Last year there was a control at the first turn. We held zeroes into the first turn only to see that there was no control. Dropping to six late and accelerating madly I realized that the control would be in the next turn. Lo and behold there it was. Reaching speeds close to Mach 1 we approached this second acute. I saw Larry grab his door grip and brace himself as I pitched the car to the left, scrubbed some speed and then swung the car back around to the right as the apex arrived. Around we went, right on time. Of course we dropped about six more seconds getting back up to speed as this time we really had to climb. The drive between here and the next control was probably the most challenging of the rally. I even had to ask Larry to open a window because I'd worked up a sweat. We were as much as 7 seconds down twice but managed to gain it all back in time for the control at the top of the hill.

It was pretty much a cakewalk from there to the end and the transit on into Cache Creek for the ice race on the lake.

Last year the lake event was counted in the scores, this year each car got to make two laps as fast as they wanted just for fun. And what fun it was. I actually hit 4th gear on the straightaway. It's a little unnerving going that fast aimed at a 180 degree turn on a frozen lake. I sure have a lot of respect for those nuts that actually race wheel to wheel on this venue.

The awards were presented in a timely fashion, and in spite of us having only picked up 3 points for the day, Gary Webb and John Kisela were able to hang on for the over all win. They ended up with 7 points to our 8. Only 1 point separated us after two demanding days on snow and ice covered roads. Jim and Christy Breazeale finished 3rd with 10 points followed by first day leaders Glen Wallace and Richard Squire with 12.

Many many thanks to Paul and Tony and the whole B.C. crew for putting on a truly great event.

Larry was so impressed with the novice program in B.C. that he donated a new Alfa "B" box to a randomly drawn novice competitor. This allows them to take the next step up in competition in style.

Incidentally, 1st and 2nd overall were using Alfa Elite computers. Thank you to Mike Friedman for creating that tool for us.

Congratulations to Gary and John and to all the class winners, Sach Carlson and Russ Kraushaar in Historic class, Roy Lima and John Rapson in Calculator class, Ron and Josh Sorem in Paper class, and Dan Fealk and Stuart Fealk in Novice class.