Total Miles: 1215.89
Weather: Stupid Windy
States: MD, WV, VA, TN

Felt a lot better and got going around 10:00AM from our friends Valerie & Bill’s house in Maryland. We took the slow way around DC and got on the Skyline Drive and the Blue Ridge Parkway. What fantastic driving roads! They have tarmac rally written all over them. New Year’s Eve was certainly a great choice of day to go briskly down some of the twisty sections. I think we saw less then a dozen oncoming cars all day, and we were on it for more then 160 miles. Much more fun then the grind on the I-95 or the I-81. It does add to the miles and I winced as our average trip speed plummeted, but such a sweet drive in the country.

Got back to business on the highway around 5:00PM. We set our sights on Knoxville and were very, very pleased to see that Tennessee has a 70MPH speed limit. We used this and light traffic to make a run for Nashville around 8:00PM. We booked the hotel en’route, checked in, bought champagne and celebrated the EST New Year with about 10 minutes to spare. Then when our hotel clock hit 12:00 we celebrated again! Happy New Year everyone! On track for OK City tomorrow - Thanks for the emails, comments, etc.

Miles: 428.23
Weather: Cold and sunny
States: NJ, DE, MD

Christine and I both got the flu. First she had it at my parent’s house, then I got it at her parent’s house.

This morning was rough. It took a lot of effort to climb into the rally car and ride down to Baltimore. Christine drove the first shift, while I pulled my knees up to my chest in the co-drivers seat. I would have been in that position had we not gone anywhere.

A few hours later I felt good enough to drive and we made our first contact! N3TEE called on our frequency as we hit traffic in Delaware. He confirmed that staying on the state route 40 would be better then getting on I-95 at 5:00PM. Thanks for the contact and the comment!

We’re feeling a lot better.
Tomorrow is the big push to Tennessee. We’re hoping for 700 miles.
See you on the road!

Even though other transportation was offered, we stayed firm to our decision to drive the rally car to and from my parents house in Maine. This gave us a chance to test out systems and see how the car will be set up for the USA trip. On Saturday I took it to the car wash to prep it for the sticker cover up. It was still very dirty from Intl’ Rally New York. I was able to tweak the APRS configuration and hopefully we’ll have a better track on the way home. I now have a monitored frequency programmed into the APRS packet - 146.550 We’ll see if we make any contacts with that.

I got out the white vinyl we brought and now have the trunk, numbers, and reflective stickers covered up. Much more subdued from the back - a little less identifiable. If 10 was a rally car in full sticker trim with a giant 761 on the side and 1 was a stock white Dodge Neon… We’re right around a 9.8 now.

We’re heading out in a little bit back to NJ. We’ll be stopping in New Hampshire to meet up with friends. We’re now out our furthest North Eastern point - and it’s all West and South from here. I’ll try to get some more pictures posted when we get to Jersey.

Before the Neon went to NY I flushed the radiator with some antifreeze. As it does ‘freeze’ there. Well there was some hesitation to the mix of antifreeze to water. Panic danced in my head: “Yeah - I have antifreeze in there.” “Umm… Well I flushed it and added at least a half gallon of it.” “At least 1/3 of a bottle.” “Was it 50/50 mixed already?” “I topped it off with water only at the rally…” “Crap…” “Trying to replace freeze plugs on Christmas Eve will be fun.”

When we touched down in Newark there was clumps of frozen ice firmly attached to the runway. Our friend Ray who picked us up at the airport reports to us: “Yeah - it was down in the teens last weekend.” This is very bad. This is a frozen and cracked block bad. At 3:00AM (local time) I tear off the car cover and reveal the engine. I open the radiator cap. No fluid at the top. I peek in and see some green residue. I grab the lower radiator hose and don’t feel anything at all after squeezing. It looks like the back of the engine is wet.
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It’s time once again for road trip USA. Similar to RTUSA-II we’ll be driving the Dodge Neon Rally Car across the country from Maine to California. Only this time we’ll have as much equipment as possible to make the journey safer and go by faster. We stopped by AAA and got our trip-tic + maps + tour books. For ham stuff, I’m planning APRS tracking and we’ll have the 2 Meter 60W mobile ICOM, my FT-60 hand-held and a GPS receiver (that hopefully we can get to display APRS data). Instead of GPS on the laptop (we’ll take that as a backup) we’ll have a smaller stand alone unit. I’m going to try to log some mobile contacts and will be polling received APRS data for local repeaters and frequencies. As usual the rally car will be KI6IUC-9 and can be tracked here or on APRS.fi. For tunes, we’ll have some AC powered PC speakers zip-tied to the dash board, hooked up to a new XM Radio receiver.

For the route we’re going to attempt an I-40 crossing. Sure, it’s safer to travel on the I-10, but I just hate that drive across Texas. “Hey, we made it to Texas!” (next day) “I guess we’ll stop in Midland… Texas…” (next day) “Why are we still in Texas?!” The pan-handle is the length of NJ, so it’s as much TX as I want to see this year. We’ll be swinging up to Maine to visit my parents the weekend after Christmas. Skip back to NJ for a night or two, pack the car and then head out. Stopping first in Baltimore to see friends. We have planned to do some travel on the Blue Ridge Parkway. We’re hoping for Nashville or Memphis for New Years Eve, which either way should be fun. A stop in Phoenix to see friends, then a final push for Southern California. Five days maybe. Here’s what the route looks like in Google Maps. 3,315 miles We’ll try to chew off 700-800 miles a day, which would not be a grueling pace were it not in a car setup for stage rally.

We’ll be blogging from the road as much as possible this time. Hotels now routinely have free wifi, and we’re war-driving professionals should it come to that. Look for posts tagged with the new RTUSA-III logo. I also make a new category called “Road Trip“.

As some of you know we picked up a blue 2008 Honda Fit a couple months ago. (Fit-fit pics) It took all 14 of the estimated 12 weeks to get the plates from the DMV. The plate was originally intended as just a statement, but it looks like we can make it a sentence. It will look somewhat dorky-cool when parked together. Now the Blazer feels especially left out. Sorry Chevy - maybe if you tried a little harder, got 30 MPG, were super fun to drive around town, chibi cute, and blue. Then, just maybe…

Hey hey!
We got some coverage and a mention over at Garage 419!
2008 International Rally New York FWD love too. Check it out!

We had an awesome time rallying this year. From the rough bumps and jumps of Gorman Ridge to the twisty woods of International Rally New York. The goal was to run 5 events, win the regional championship, and win the national championship. What a ride! We invite you to enjoy our 2008 Season Finale Video, and read our end of season wrap up.

Prescott Rally: We had a really strong showing again at Prescott this year. Every time we run the event we step up our game. First year it was handling the speed - “Yep - that’s 100MPH Kris… Get over it.” In 2006 it was absolutely trusting my co-driver at speed (and in life). In 2007 it was the realization that we stay focused and relaxed for 22 miles, setting ‘an out of nowhere’ seventh fastest on the long stage. This year it was an absolute commitment to stay flat out, foot to the floor. The car can literally not go any faster as I had it pinned for 5 miles of First View. Be Smooth. Don’t Lift.

As events go, it is our well documented favorite, and we had a great time again this year. We had some more of our close rally friends attend (probably after hearing us talk endlessly about the event): Eddie & Erik were out in Eddie’s G2 Golf and I was looking forward to trading some times, they unfortunately had some brake pad failure on day two. Luckily they were able to settle the car into a spin to slow it down before a tight right hand turn. Dick & Marie came down from Idaho and set 2nd in Production AWD and 12th overall - even after having some problems on Saturday. We would like to thank Brian & Vanessa, as they make this rally a commitment every year.
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