Hanging out with rally racers, watching a rally.

Friday and Saturday Rally NY ran some 200 miles thru the countryside of the southern border of NY, literally on the border, only a river seperated us from Pennsylvania at the service area.

We got a late start driving down, I had to push a couch thru a second story window of the apartment across from mine (new tenant moving in), and was expecting a call from a guy with a 73 Triumph Tiger I was hoping to buy (no call), but we were under way by 11am Saturday.

Rally NY is a fun time, although not especially professionally run, its one of the only times you'll see tarmac run in the morning, and gravel run in the afternoon, only giving the racers a couple hours to change the cars over, and theres specific spectator areas that always seem to be in the most boring place, or set up in one of the more dangerous places (outside of a turn, rather than inside where a car is less likely to hit you), but giving people with press passes the spots. (I vowed to print my own VIP or press pass for this fall).

This time around, it was great, I couldn't understand much of what was said thru the afternoon, as I was hanging out with 5 Turks, 4 of which were either drivers or co-drivers, who would go back and translate a bit for me when they saw the puzzled look on my face. : ) I heard so many rally stories I can't remember them all today, got a good laugh as one of teams told me why they were watching the rally instead of racing Saturday (they rolled their Focus about a mile from the finish on the FIRST stage). Got even more of a taste of Turkey (my buddy Orhan is always bringing back deserts/candy when he flys over from Turkey), this time enjoying a bottle of uludag gazoz, which is sorta like Sprite, while we watched the race, and some homemade Żubrówka , which is a vodka with a single blade of bison grass that gives it its unique flavor at the end of the night, try some if you ever get the chance. Also enjoyed 3 types of Baklava. You've never really had dessert until you've had eastern european desserts.

So thanks to Burak Tuglu and Mustafa Samli (driver and co-driver who flipped) for the stories, Ozgur and his wife Nilgun for lunch, and for the Audi/VW smalltalk between cars coming thr the stage (hopefully meet up with them again at waterfest this year (he's a GTI guy), and lastly, Orhan Avcioglu, my Turkish contact, who hooks me up with all these cool people, and awesome rally stuff, and eventually, a place to stay when i go check out Turkey for myself.

 

Awesome!! Must have pictures!!!