The rallynotes.com team invites you out to the High Desert Trails Rally in Ridgecrest, California. We have some great spectating opportunities! The 2010 High Desert Trails spectator guide is now available!

HDT 2010 spectatorguide.pdf

The Rallynotes.com team were out in Ridgecrest last weekend helping to teach and instruct the 2010 California Rally Series Rally School. Matt Farah and the guys from The Smoking Tire showed up with a couple of Mitsu’s and it looks like they had a blast sliding around the test course. In the video you can see Christine going over the timing controls, and I’m covering skidplate material – and aluminum types. Not all exciting stuff, but you’re going to need to know it if you want to do well out on the stages.

We had a great time teaching the new recruits and encourage you to sign up for the next California Rally Series Rally School. If you want to do some more sliding around in the dirt with your daily driver check out the CRS Rallycross Schedule for 2010!

How fast a year slides by… I’m sitting in the study behind my desk. This desk is just down the hall, across the living room, and out the patio door to the garage. Inside that garage sits my rally car. Not in Yorba Linda, not in San Clemente, and certainly not in Boyle Heights. The house has hit its first of many ‘completion points’. Besides little things, the lawn, and taking out the garbage – the pile of ‘destroy-bathroom-renovation-plumbing-painting’ housing projects have subsided. For those of you that are lucky enough to be two rooms away from your rally car, make sure you appreciate it. Working on the car after driving 25 miles gets old. The days of dropping the tranny in the UCI parking lot are over. “What? Oh this? Yeah… I’m just changing my oil…”

I pulled the retrospective I started for now and will publish it when I’m done with it. I have enough for a next installment, but I don’t have enough for the rest of the story. I know a lot of you enjoyed it – and this gives me fuel to finish it.

Rally Project 2010 #1 – High Desert Trails. We moved the rally forward into April and I’m really glad we did. I am focused on putting on a really great event and I hope to see a lot of new faces out there this year. HDT is a rally that Christine and I put on in Ridgecrest, California. We started it last year and had a very successful event. We want to continue this success every year.

Rally Project 2010 #2 – New G5 rally car. (that’s Group 5 – as in Open 2WD)

* obtain running shell
* clean and gut
* rewire and prep
* suspension
* cage

Working on it. – Kris

Let me dust off the old RSS and post.php here and get an update on rallynotes.com. What’s been happening and what’s planned for the rallynotes.com rally team?

New Headquarters: We will be moving to Long Beach, CA in the next month. We bought a house with a garage and enough yard space for a bigger ‘future‘ garage / shop. This was the goal for 2009 and although we missed competing this year, we’ll be in good shape for next year. As new home owners we will have a million side projects that don’t involve rally, but it will be nice to have the rally car at arms length instead of 20+ miles away.

Supporting the sport: We’ve been volunteering and continue to volunteer to support our local events, and we hope you do too! High Desert Trails, Desert Storm, Gorman Ridge Rally, Prescott, etc. We’ll be out there helping out in some capacity. Organizer, scoring, radio, etc. Zero car at Prescott. We’ll see you on the stages!

A look back: Over the next few months I’d like to take a retrospective look at the Dodge Rally Neon. A lot of you had questions that maybe went unanswered, and a lot of rules have changed since I started building the car in 2003. There are a lot of cheap cars and rally cars for sale out there. I’m hoping to inspire some new competitors into the most exciting motorsport in the world. Now would be the best time to point your RSS reader here.

The future: MMX. The building of the next car. My goal is to do a rally in 2010 with the new G5 car. Will that be late in the season? Probably… I plan to gather a running ‘shell’ at the end of this year. Hopefully just as I have written everything I know about the Dodge Rally Neon, I’ll start posting pictures of seam welding on the new shell.

Next time: We’ll start from the beginning. “Selecting a car for rally. Why I chose the Dodge Neon.” Stay tuned! – Kris

Long time readers and friends of rallynotes.com should know that I wouldn’t have gotten into this sport if it wasn’t for spectating. When Christine and I decided to take on organizing a rally we knew that we would want spectators at our event.

So – You are invited! Bring your friends and family out to see what a rally is all about. We’re going to have a nice big area on the hill where you can see the action up close. The facility will be hosting a BBQ that will run you about $6. You’ll have access to the service area, the course, and be able to come and go. Other spectating can be done at the palapa, where you can see the action of the fast straight and the new section of the course. This location will have limited access and you will have to wait until the mid-day break to leave or go there. Everyone will be required to sign the waiver and have a wrist-band. Bring clothes for the weather, folding chairs, and your cameras up to Ridgecrest California in 2 weeks!

There are maps and information up on our website – High Desert Trails Rally – See you on the stages!

Okay. So you want to build a rally car. You’ve been working on this used Galant and you are totally going to rally next year. You’re ready to make the jump off the (couch / drag-strip / PS3 / rallycross / TSD / keyboard / underground racing club) and actually go stage rally! The first thing you absolutely must do is attend the CRS Rally School in Ridgecrest, CA on February 7 – 8th 2009. As graduates of the school in 2005, it gave us the confidence to tackle national level competition our first year and go on to – well – you’ve seen the trophy room.

Here’s what I said about it after we took the class in 2005:

Two key things to mention. We’ll be once again volunteering as instructors. We’re offering a discount if you take the school and attend our High Desert Trails Rally (two weeks later) on February 21st! See the High Desert Trails Rally website for more details.

Click here for the 2009 CRS Rally School Website!

Sign up, tell your friends, get prospective co-drivers a late Christmas gift, and get your girlfriend to go.
You’ll have a great time and we’ll see you there!
UPDATE: Bumping this above RTUSA3

Road Trip USA III Gallery is up.

Total Miles: 2953.40
Weather: We bring the rains
States: NM, AZ

Made great time to Brian and Vanessa’s house in Phoenix. We had steaks on the grill. Just when we were used to the warm Southwestern weather, we wake up to some rain. Just a reasonable commute to home now.