The full report: We headed up to Lancaster on Friday afternoon. Traffic was light and we made good time. It’s only about 1.5 hours with a good average speed from Irvine. We made the decision to take the Chevy, as it’s a highway cruiser and less conspicuous then a red and white Neon with out of state plates – that when pulled over is NOT (technically) in the rally. 
Seeing about 15 LA cruisers in various places around rally campus and stage roads confirmed this.
They canceled the only stage that had forest spectator viewing on it. This stinks, but they made it very well known at rally HQ. Flyers everywhere letting people know that there would be no way to forest spectate the rally. Okay, like I said at Ramada – I can deal with it, as long as I’m informed.
This prompted us to take action and volunteer to work. I figured we’d have to pull some strings, but a quick chat with MaryAnne in the volunteer booth and we were ‘hard carded’ and signed up to work the Magic Mountain stages on Saturday. Christine and I already knew the stage captain Brent from the Ridgecrest Rally School. Going to Ridgecrest has paid heavy dividends for meeting and networking with the people of CRS. It was worth it just to meet all the organizers, tech, support, and some competitors that will be at: Rim, Ramada, Gorman Ridge, etc. It’s a big family that we’re becoming a part of.
We hung out and watched tech and scrutineering. I’ve never seen this aspect of any rally up close and it gave me a lot of information on ‘what to expect’ when we hit tech. Ron Wood was a familiar face that was part of the team doing the thorough tech inspection. I took lots of pictures and made notes on what to watch out for.
The first super special was an ‘exhibition’ run, so most didn’t get too crazy. A lap around the outside and two times off the jump. It got dark and cold quick.
Saturday we met the group up at rally HQ and traveled about 40 miles to our spot on the top of the mountain. We worked a windy, sometimes cold FTC, and then a cold sometimes foggy ATC. The arrival time control is probably one of the harder controls to work at a rally. As you get competitors coming in on the same minute, and you have to re-space them out 1 minute apart again. As well as allow them enough time to get belted up and over to the stage start. Brent grabbed timecards, Christine pulled off the copies and wrote the time down, while I logged each car and calculated new start times. We made a good team. Rick worked as the CRO (competitor relations officer) for the stage and made sure there wasn’t a log-jam coming up to the control. And if there was going to be one, he let us know with time to spare.
Saturday night we were able to catch the last dozen competitors on the super special stage. I must say the over/under bridge kicks ass! This was a cool super special to watch. Although we were bummed about the spectator situation, we got involved and got some great experience for when we run the Rim of the World Rally.