The mobile rally office

Well, the Audi South West Endurance Rally has to have a mention because what an event it was!

Having only ever done one rally before, our experience is somewhat limited. My experience of reading maps is minimal, and plotting on the move as we drove through the Dorest, Devon and Cornwall lanes was a task and a half. Yes, we got lost. A lot! But I now feel that mastering plot and bash is a step closer, and am determined to conquer that next now my mobile office running skills are improving substantially. After that, I'm going to learn how to use a stopwatch on the regularities.....!

I was trying to explain to sprog 1 what I have to do in this 'office' and when you talk about it, you realise just what a lot is going on at any one time. And the fact that you are in a 4 point harness so movement is severely restricted, it has taken some working out how to get everything where I can reach it. Let alone climb the very steep learning curve that is endurance rallying.

Aside from the paperwork etc, the most important task has been to work out how to reach behind the driver's seat to get the cheese and onion pasties out in one piece from under the tool rolls, straps, spare parts etc which somehow always end up on top of the grub. Endurance is one thing, but hunger is not permissible.

The pork pies are definitely easier to retrieve in one piece, but you get sick of pork pies for two days solid, and variety in your diet is essential! We always come back with plenty of food that we wish we had remembered during the rally. This time we forgot the grapes and biscuits which had worked their way far under the driver's seat, but we managed to find the bananas. That wasn't so great though as my banana skin ended up in the poti, and once the light was on, it stank of cremated nana!

So, after ensuring we can eat, then there is the paperwork. This includes a road book with pace notes for the each day's selectifs (and sometimes tulips for the routes in between selectifs), a map book given to you by the organisers to try to give you some idea of where you ought to be going, a Philips Navigator atlas which weighs about the same as me, and then the OS maps for the regularity sections or to try and find exactly where you want wrong navigating from the map book or Philips! I can just about fold an OS map in a large room, given half an hour or so. In the front seat of the car, in a harness, it is a skill that is currently avoiding me.

Then there are the time cards which you have to be able to produce at every time control and marshall. All this lot is on your knee, although just occasionally the Philips manages to sneak back into the special shelf built for it under the dash to stop my legs going numb and falling off which would be hellish awkward when I dive out at selectifs to get a delay allowance! On top of that lot is a clipboard, which has on it the results from the previous day, the penalty and timing sections of the regs, our meal tickets, the car papers, and any other info we might need, phone numbers of VW dealers included!

As you can imagine, my legs are getting accustomed to the weight, but finding the right book, card etc at the right moment, when you are also trying to get your helmet off to go back onto a road section and handing your time card out the window to a marshall is taking some practice. The worst thing is when the whole lot ends up on the floor and you lose your pen down the side of the seat as well. And I reckon the Golf has eaten about 10 lighters now as I never seem to have one when a fag break finally presents itself.

Finally, in the paperwork section come the post-it notes, which are used for everything from marking where to open an OS map (but are no use on how to close the damned thing), marking a page in the roadbooks, map books or Philips I need to find easily, and sticking on the dash to mark the next turn off whilst I plot and bash the next stage of the route. They are also useful for reminding me what number we are running that day so I get the right arrival times at selectifs and time control, and which cars should be in front or behind of us so we don't get too much out of synch. By mid-Saturday this time, I could barely have told you my own name so Post-it notes come in very handy as an aide memoir for the very basics too!

Then there are the assortment of pencils, pens, rubbers, marker pens etc which you need. We've solved that with a handy bit of foam from the rollcage, strapped on the vertical roll bar by the door and drilled with holes to stick pens and pencils in - works brilliantly, and has been much admired by several other navigators who have just spent most of a stop searching down the sides of seats trying to retrieve errant pens. However, keeping the pens out of the hands of the sprogs in between rallies seems impossible, so I will have to learn to check that we have a full selection of writing implements before setting off. Marker pens are essential to mark routes as in the dark a thin pencil line on a map can be bordering on impossible to see with tired eyes. It is also hard first thing in the morning after a night in the bar with the Endurance crowd!!

Next we have the trip (a Brantz) which has to be constantly zeroed, checked, frozen (to account for wheel spin), and reversed when we go the wrong way! I can just reach this with my fingertips to zero all settings, and also have a remote button on a cable for zeroing the intermediates. This button however seems to spend most of its time on the floor just out of reach when I need it most! It needs to be where my driver can reach it for when I forget to zero it, which is far too often still so it will probably end up velcroed to the footwell somewhere near the gearstick as it likes it so much down there.

There is the nav light, which is fastened under the trip on the dash, and that constantly, when in use, gets in the way of the maps. But I don't see how that is ever going to change as it is essential and the maps are not going to get any easier to fold. (Although Guy yesterday suggested putting them on a roll like the Torah which bears thinking about!)

And then the poti which is a large, illuminated magnifying 'box' that plugs into the fag lighter, and sits on the maps to try and spot the white road we are supposed to have turned down. That is nearly always on the floor somewhere next to the rally bag, also out of reach!

Then there's the torch to read the code boards in the forest, or to illuminate the way to the marshalls. It is also an essential when trying to go for a pee in some dark forest. I nearly broke my leg on the Lombard as I fell through a hole in a wall and then into a seemingly endlessly deep ditch, which I had to scrabble my way out of, so the torch always comes with me now on those particular excursions!

What else? Some people have helmet nets, but I don't know where those go, so we don't have them yet, despite having acquired an ancient Dryad book on netting to try and make them. So, the helmets live in the chaos known as the back seat with Chas our mascot, and Dave has double jointed arms from being a mechanic and seems to be able to reach those where I can't. I ripped some parcel nets out of a Merc in a scrappie last year to put on the doors to keep stuff in, but we haven't remembered to fit them yet.

On the floor by my feet is the rally bag, which has a plastic folder full of pens etc (unless raided by the kids), travel sickness pills (not this time as they fell out in my car on the way there but luckily I didn't need them), mobile phone, head torch, spare torch, plastic bags to use as bins (or if the pills don't work!), directions to hotels, the way home etc, the full regs for the event, Motorsports licence, Motor Club membership cards, and for some completely unknown reason, a computer dongle.

Round my neck is the stopwatch, which I have never remembered to stop yet, a lanyard with a pen on it, and a lanyard with the entry card, car number, name etc on it.

Above my head is the OK/SOS board, which I have to grab, leap out and display every time we are forced to stop - twice in two rallies for punctures, luckily that is all so far.

In the door are my glasses, which I lose constantly, some crystallised ginger for those iffy moments (it works, I recommend it highly), a duster for cleaning off the door numbers occasionally, a rag for multiple uses, some cable ties, and a few other indefinable bits and bobs that have fallen in there over time, and now live there.

And I think that's pretty much my office. Dave's office is more complicated (and much bigger) as it has all the mechanical stuff in it, but he knows where all that is, and I don't need to. Phew!