Picture Perfect Rally

On Saturday, November 20th sixteen Porsches navigated in and out of the Napa Valley wine country roadways looking for 35 specific images of signs, sculptures, structures, and landscapes. This was my first attempt at organizing a Gimmick Rally. Jim Robison, our Rally Director, offered to help me organize this event. His help made it a very fun event. The idea came from me attending the Last Porsche Parade in French Lick, Indiana. They always include a Gimmick Rally in the week’s celebration of all things Porsche. The Rally is one of their most heavily attended events each year. So, Mike Hinton, Past President Redwood Region and I decided to do this one together. It had two parts: answer a bunch of questions about Porsches used in movies and follow a set of rally road instructions and identify nine graveyards putting the pictures supplied in sequential order. It was a bust driving on all those Indiana rural roads finding the graveyards, and we forgot to answer the Porsche movie quiz.

When I got back to Santa Rosa, I was sitting in one of our board meetings. The conversation came up that a November rally date was available and needed a rally master. I volunteered to do a gimmick rally and not a time & distance rally, and Jim said OK. He and I figured out the route and settled on a Calistoga start at the beginning of Silverado Trail and ending up in Napa on Trancas Street. Jim refined the route and took most of the photographs. Jim has a lot of experience making rallies entertaining so he came up with the idea of a lady taking photos of the route and losing the actual order of her pictures. At 1:00 PM, Porsche drivers left the start looking for these images, beautifully presented in a photo album. Sandy, my wife, and I went over to the Napa Valley Welcome sign and took pictures of all the cars as they went on the image searches.

When Sandy (Steele) and I were verifying the route and the exact order of the photos, we completely missed one of the photos. After the welcome sign, we drove to the Yount Block House marker and waited for all the Porsches to drive by. We then stopped each and ask if they noticed the marker. Most said no, so we said it’s your bonus photo and away they went to finish the gimmick rally. We met everyone at Mountain Mike’s Pizza on Trancas. Jim and I scored the sheets. You could score a perfect 105 points, and we had a father-son team get 100 points; it was the Son’s Birthday to boot. They also received a free entry to a 2022 Redwood Region autocross of their choice. The second and third place winners were separated by one point. We had three cars that went solo which is very difficult to manage finding many of the images. Judy Maggiore had the best solo score. Jeff Hall and Kathleen Smith (with Bernadette, their French Bulldog) drove their Macan, the only four-door on the rally.

Jim and I are going to propose another Picture-Perfect Gimmick Rally for the Sonoma Valley in 2022. I hope to see more Porsches participating next year.

Congratulations to trophy winners:

1. Kevin Kirkbride and Mike Willimarth with a score of 100 points
2. Gary and Linda Bayless with a score of 93
3. Ben and Lisa Davoren with a score of 92

Perfect First Place winners!

Photos by Craig Steele