As seen in my blog posts here, the Civic, aka Earl Burner Civic, had a mind of its own, refused to be tinkered with, and was thereby grounded for the rally. That means I’m taking the daily driver, El Borrego. By any practical stretch of the imagination, El Borrego is already well equipped for road trips, including all-terrain tires and plenty of outlets for everything I need to take with me. The downside is that theming with vinyl graphics is definitely not going to happen. The most I did this time was stick the two large Lemons Rally stickers left over from the Rocky Mountain Breakdown onto the two rear side windows.
The plan for the Rust Belt Ramble was to travel from the starting point in Detroit to Dayton, Pittsburgh and Buffalo. Specifically, July 14 was the pre-rally meet-up at the Detroit Bus Company, which once again put together a unique “idiots tour” of the city. With my change of plans and everything else I had to do to prepare, going on the bus tour wasn’t going to happen. Although given last year’s shenanigans, where they staged a protest at the GM Headquarters to bring back the Saturn, I wondered if I might have been missing out on anything worthwhile.
The rally was set to depart from the Detroit Bus Company on the morning of Friday, July 15, with our driver’s meeting at 8:00 am sharp…or whenever rallymaster Jeff damn well decided it was time.
Earlier in the week, the rally organizer Eric mentioned that we would be expecting close to 40 cars (teams) this time. So, about double the number of participants from the Rocky Mountain Breakdown. The actual number was 35. (Eric would later mention that this year’s Ramble was one of the most social rallies he had ever witnessed.)
Sure, I’m out of place in my daily driver, but I’m in this for the adventure.
On the other hand, ask me how I feel at the end of the rally…