08/25/2026
I have some wrap-up thoughts to share:
First of all, I had a great time playing in the dirt with my friends, thank you all for coming out and making it so much more fun than it would be doing it by myself! The level of humour and creativity you all bring is epic, and at the end of the day we all have some great stories to tell. I look forward to many more years of this!
Having said that, I think we got a little bit lucky this year. We had a couple of safety fails that could have gone a lot worse. Things happen, but things shouldn't happen out of neglect if it can be helped. Nobody got hurt and nobody died, and some good memories were made, but I URGE you all to take full advantage of the "safety dollars don't count toward the budget" part of the rules, and spend a few dollars on things that could save your life or someone else's. I'm not saying that anyone did or didn't do a thing, just that in the future please give the safety items a look-over.
Okay, nanny granny mode off.
This year we consciously made the route a little bit shorter, partly because we knew the Trunk Road would give some people trouble and we'd all be averaging a bit lower speed, and partly because nobody needs to be driving through Antler Alley at 2am trying to get home because we couldn't announce the winners until after dark. Thank you to all who stayed for the awards!
Was everyone okay with the slightly shorter route? Specifically, a shorter day 2?
Something we NEED to do, something we've been struggling with for years, is a way to improve communication enroute. I started a Discord page which would allow you all to post pictures of your cars, your progress, talk about general garbage, share ideas, trade parts, and most importantly: get information pushed to you enroute when cell data returns rather than hoping you'll notice and will check Facebook for updates. If people don't like Discord (I use it all the time and I think it's wonderful) we can try Whatsapp if people prefer that.
What do you think? Discord? Whatsapp? Something else?
Another thing we would LIKE to do is to get you to post your photos to an app that lets us look at and judge them in real time. This would save so much time at the end of the event and may allow us to do more driving/scavengering rather than spending so much time standing around waiting for scores to be tallied, and if you have to drop out at least the progress you made can be scored. One of our team is trying out Goosechase, which will also allow messages to be pushed for route updates if necessary, though it doesn't allow teams to send messages to organizers.
Have you used anything else? Do you mind having one app for communication and one app to post your pictures in?
One year we may START at a campground Friday night, spend Saturday driving, camp somewhere Saturday night, and finish the event after some more driving Sunday. Teams can arrive throughout the afternoon/evening and mingle, work on cars, get pre-judged, etc, and on Saturday morning the rest of the teams can show up, get judged, we have the driver's meeting, and are on the road probably an hour or more sooner than otherwise. Plus we're already out of town when we start. You'll have to make sure that you're good to go, because there probably won't be any parts stores or gas stations nearby.
Anyway, I think that's already more than most people will finish reading so I'll S**U, but again: thank you to all the support crew and especially to all the competitors for another fun event!
