2009 Tombstone Trail

57 teams registered for the 2009 Tombstone Trail, but three never paid, and several withdrew, so we ended up with only 48 teams competing on the event. The weather turned out great; after a week of cold and wet it suddenly turned warm and sunny. By the end of the night we got a light mist, but not enough to damper any spirits.

Because of SCCA's ridiculous new membership requirement, registration last year took the longest ever, so we changed it up a little this year to have people register and begin immediately, rather than to be assigned a later start time. That, plus the change from SCCA to allow electronic membership submission, made the registration process go quickly. Since contestants had no time to review the rules before starting, we added 30 minutes to the time used in previous years, giving them a total of 3-1/2 hours to study the rules, map out a course, and run it.

By the way, the $15 the SCCA grabbed from you for the temporary membership can be applied to a full membership, so if you'd like to take advantage of that, let me know, and I'll send you the membership number that was assigned to you.

The rules this year provided for multiple questions at the cemeteries, with the questions getting progressively harder, so contestants had to make a choice between spending less time driving in order to get the harder questions, or more time driving to pick up the easier questions at more cemeteries. One cemetery had 4 questions to answer, and was the first tiebreaker for scoring, so most teams elected to try that one. However, the third question was a trick one, and more than half the teams failed to notice a woman's maiden name matching the given family name.

The cemetery providing the most difficulty to the contestants had 3 trick questions. First, you had to catch an easy spelling trap, then you had to catch a math trap (65 years, not 55), which didn't matter anyway, because the dates were for the wife of Halvor, not Halvor, then you had to find the real Halvor, with another math trap (4 years and some months, not 5 years). Finally, you had to use the cemetery roster to figure out who's marker had the top missing. Most teams got 1 or 2 of the 3 questions wrong, and some missed all 3.

The most difficult non-trick question seemed to be finding a marker in a huge cemetery in Cannon Falls. The rules stated that the larger the cemetery, the more likely the tombstone would be found near the main gate. We used the very closest marker, which most people walked right by and wasted precious time searching farther than necessary into the dark cemetery. At the other huge cemetery adjacent to that one, many people wasted time looking inside from the north gate, where we specifically told them that the answer was to be found outside the west gate.

Brent Hall and Suzanne Jackson had finished the Tombstone Trail twice before in 2nd overall, and this year finally cracked the top spot, winning overall and Class A. Nina Noe and Brad Odegard, last year's winners, swapped places and finished 2nd overall and in Class A this year. Christopher Spargo and Rob Crowe took 3rd in A and overall.

Class B went to Nate Austin and Dan Smallidge in 4th overall, with Kevin Beck and Amanda Ingle taking 2nd from Jim Anderson and Clark Pansch.

In Class D, first-timers Phillip Britton and Veronica Bailye took the win in an amazing 8th place overall, smoking the 2nd place team of Brandon Gerenz and Jessica Gerenz.

Class AA went to Lance Stevens and Luke Shaw in 9th overall, just 1 point ahead of Jay Luehmann and Eric Henningsen, who were also just a point ahead of Carrie Carlson and Mark Utecht.

Kelly Simonson and Rachel Larson took top honors in Class C, with Allie Micka and Jeremiah Davis 2nd, and Mike Lindquist and Julie Lindquist in 3rd.

Stu Tanquist and Charlie Moen grabbed the best costume trophy for their Budget Bungee Jumpers (half off on your second jump, if you make the first), and Shelley Lueck and Ted Hogan took home the coveted Dead Last award.

Thanks to Breon Nagy, who co-rallymastered the event with me, and to JB Lewis and Vicki Larson for their help with registration and scoring.

Mark Larson
Rallymaster

You can see the event results here.

Read the 2008 report.