As far as I know this is the only rally in Oregon (aside from the hippie protest rallys of course) and it happens annually at about the same time.
I went to Portland International Raceway on Friday and worked as a voulenteer. There were 6 stages on Friday. I did crowd control from stages 2 and 4 here are the pictures from that:
This is a 180 of the spot I was crowd controlling (remember, clicking on the picture makes it bigger!)
That's a car
Also a car
Car
Same car as in the last shot maybe?
We checked out the cars and had chips for dinner and then hung out in the stands in the freezing cold for stage 6 with Ben R. Chris H. Chris C. and some other crew guys. I got lucky and managed to get out of starting. It was sweet. Here are some picts of the event leading up to stage 6:
These are the offical Subaru team cars.
These car the class C or D cars that are waiting to run stage 5, it was done on the motocross track.
If you look in the distance that's about as much of stage 5 as I got to see. Now for stage 6 the cars started at the circle raced maybe 1/4 mile down the track, cut a U turn and came back the X is where they had to make about a 135 degree turn and shoot off into the place where I was standing in stage 2 and 4. There was some serious fishtailing and a few cars ended up facing the wrong way.
This is what it would look like if you were laying on your stomach on the track shown in the last picture
Volunteers waiting for the race to start and the sun to go down
3. Saturday
Morning, loaded up with supplies and headed out 26 to 6 going twords Tillamook. That is the prettiest valley to coast route in Oregon. I've done them all countless times but somehow had managed to miss this one. It's the best. The others suck. We got to milepost 12 and headed into the woods. Met up with the other voulenteers at 9am. We waited for awhile and then got our swag (I got a T-shirt, a Subaru carabeaner and lariatte and a bottle of water. So once everyone showed up we were positioned at our road marshalling locations. You have to drive the course to get to your location. We drove pretty fast trying to keep up with the guy positioning us (his name is John, and he is a great guy but a bit disorganized.) Both Ben and I hit a rock. I was a bit concerned but it didn't do any damage. When we got to our location we searched around for good places to watch. I fell out of a tree in the process. I don't want to talk about it. Here are the pictures from stage 7:
You can see Ben R. up in the top right hand corner. He has a much better camera than I. He took over a gig of pictures.
There's the back of Ben's head.
That's another car
this is a truck...NO! It's a car!
So, after stage 7 we were moved down the road for stage 10. At first I was a little miffed by this because I found a great place to take pictures and I had been talking with one of the professional photographers about what kind of shots the drivers were looking for and I was going to attempt to do some good stuff. It turned out we were moved to an ever better location with incredible views of the track.
This is a 360 collage of the spot we were at.
Okay so the cars would race up the hill. If you walked over the crest you could see everything down the hill (picts of that ahead) The Triangle is where I got some high shots. the Circle is where I got some low shots (lying behind a pile of dirt and a tree getting ripped up by sticker bushes) and the X gives a rough idea where the hairpin turn is.
Here are some photos of the actual raceing. I think they are much improved over Friday's. Admittiedly I've photoshopped them a little. It was a bright sunny day and things have a tendancy to wash out. I ended up taking about 116 pictures. I ran my camera right out of batteries.
Circle Location: This is Travis Pastrana who is an X-games champion for motocross. He beat up his body so bad he needed a new sport as I understand it. He does very well.
Circle Location: I like this shot. This is the car that threw a rock and hit me in the head. Totally worth it though as they swung the back end around like no one else on that stage
Hairpin: I like this shot too, that valley was freaking gorgeous
Circle Location: after I got hit by the rock I ducked down a little lower for awhile
Circle Location: Throwing up some nice dust. I was filthy when I got home.
Circle Location: That's SubaSue. I am told she went off a cliff last season and broke her back. She's back racing now though, obviously.
Hairpin: I would run back and forth from my hidey-hole to a spot where I could get the hairpin
Circle Location: Ah! that's a good one too
Triangle Location: This is the only shot I posted from this location. It was kind of a bust
Okay, this is where I went over the hill and took some shots of the road up to the hairpin and the hairpin itself.
This one looks better bigger
That's a beetle.
Same beetle
I like that tree, I think it's leftover from the Tillamook burn but it might have just been set on fire by damn drunk teenagers.
My Stump that I took all these pictures down on the backside of the hill on.
Tempting?
So after stage 10 there were 2 more stages that day and even more on Sunday but I was wiped out So I headed back to Forest Grove to crash with some friends. Note to people going on Rt6 to Forest Grove: DO NOT TAKE Rt 8! It's all farm roads filled with slow driving morons!
