Reilly Traveling Circus

Our last day in Finland was a lesson in relativity. We (by we, I mean me as navigator) had some challenges on the regularities which resulted in us losing time despite excellent performance up until the last missed turn. In fairness, the organizers set it up deliberately so that the last turn would be a challenge. I was stewing in the passenger/navigator seat, beatingmyself and feeling that I had ruined the day when we came down the road to see a red warning triangle and a fellow competitor urging us to slow down. Creating the hill, we came upoon the scene of a bad accident involving one of our fellow rally cars. Apparently after cresting the hiss, the mother daughter team in a Mercedes convertible slid right and caught the drainage ditch next to the road. It turned the car and then it rolled over completely, coming to rest upright and perpendicular to the road and spanning the ditch. The driver was fine and the navigator was still in the car when Jeff and I arrived. When we assessed her, she was awake, alert, appropriate and able to move all extremities and noted significant neck pain. She clearly had hit her head on the ground as the car rolled as evidence by an abrasion on her forehead. We kept her in the car and waited for the ambulance to arrive and immobilize her neck with a rigid collar. They were off to the hospital. Later news is that both were discharged, with the navigator having to wear a cervical collar for the next 6 weeks while she heals. The fact that the car had a roll bar and they were wearing 4 point harnesses definitely prevented any more serious injury. Getting back in our car after the EMT’s and fire truck took control of the scene, I reflected that my “really bad day” seemed pretty petty compared to what we had just witnessed.

I had fund driving around the track on today’s test. We’ll see how the final time compares to others but at least there was no stall at the start. In the afternoon run to the final time check of the day, we were caught in a torrential downpour. This made driving and navigation a challenge. Then it was ‘hurry up and wait’: drive to the ferry terminal in Vaasa for the 3.5 hour voyage to Umea, Sweden. We assembled in a parking lot to group the rally cars, then went through check in and lined up in another parking lot for the better part of an hour waiting to board the ferry. Once the ferry docked, emptied all of the cars and trucks coming from Sweden, it was remarkably quick to load us all up. The boat was quite large but nothing compared to the size of the overnight ferry we took 2 days ago. Exiting the ferry was quite quick and we made it to the hotel without complications. Long day scheduled for tomorrow; the longest of the rally.