2011 Tombstone Trail

It's in the bag, the 34th annual Tombstone Trail. A little unusual, as events go. After 34 years of more or less the same thing, it's remarkable how much can surprise you.

For the first time, we assigned start times when people pre-registered, so everyone knew when to show up. It eliminated the long lines at registration. We limited the event to 45 cars this year to ease the over-crowding at the endpoint, and starting the cars 90 seconds apart still spread the field over almost an hour and a half.

We ran in Isanti County for the second time, starting in Cambridge and ending at the Brass Rail in Grandy. Great weather enhanced the fun, and everyone made the endpoint, where an unexpected event could have resulted in chaos, but turned out fine. When we arrived at the Brass Rail, they told us there was a hay ride coming through town with 30 or 40 people expected, but that they should be out of there by the time our people arrived. Adding 40 to our group would have made seating impossible, broken a few fire codes, and just generally made both groups miserable. At 10:00, with our group scheduled to start coming in 5 minutes, we decided they must have thought better of the hay ride and gone elsewhere. The back door opened and people in costumes walked in, not costumes we recognized, and before we knew it, our constestants were showing up in the middle of a room already filled with men dressed as anatomically correct women dressed as men, giant chickens, and Shrek. We noticed that none of them were sitting, nor eating, but standing and drinking, and after a half hour someone came through and herded all the hay riders out the back door. That was close.

We raised the bar on the questions this year, trying to make people spend more time in the cemeteries and less time in the car. The result was questions that were a little harder than most years, with lots of little tricks and traps to watch out for. The nastiest was a cemetery where it seemed almost impossible to tell which marker was nearest the road, so many of them being in a parallel row along the front fence. However, one tombstone was right next to the grassy road running through the middle of the cemetery, labeled with a half dozen "road" signs.

Matt Baker showed us that his 2002 win was no fluke, taking the overall win with Becki Baker and Class A with 34 points. They did it with accuracy, only scoring one wrong answer, a double spelling trap. Clarence and Kate Westberg took second in A and second overall with 32 points. They answered the most questions of anybody, but had 6 wrong answers. 3rd in A were former winners Brent Hall and Suzanne Jackson with 29 points, taking the spot and 5th overall from Nate and Lori Austin by going to the 4th tie-breaker. Austins took the 4th place trophy, 6th overall.

Class AA was very close with Mary and Mark Utech at 30 points, third overall, winning by a point over Nina Noe and Brad Odegard in 5th overall. Both teams are multiple-winners of past events and fierce competitors. They scored the same in all 4 tie-breakers, so one point by Nina and Brad in any category would have given them the win. 3rd in AA went to Steve Gingras and Pat Olson with 23 points.

Class B went to Amy Jaeger and Eric Dille with 24 points, again in a very close race with Jennifer Malarski and Tony Mulhern with 23, who won a tie-breaker for 2nd with Kelly Fegley and Ryan Fegley. Jennifer and Tony's tie-breaker would have beaten Amy and Eric, too, so again but for one point anywhere...

In Class C we finally had a blowout, with Daniel Tomkin and Julie Borris schooling the class with a 4-point margin. Joe Samek and TJ Samek won the tie-breaker for 2nd over Jeff Amundsen and Ronda Bowman.

Alex Dombrowski and Katrina Dombrowski gave a beat-down on class D, with a margin of 6 points over Gabriel Johnston and Leann Frydrych.

Class G, for GPS, was a little unusual this year, with most of the class opting for the new "no class" option. In class 0 you can pretty much do anything you want to do, since there is no scoring, and you're just running for fun. Todd Jarvey and Rita Jarvey seem to have a handle on Class G, being the only winners that I can recall off hand. Sue Iverson and Jessica Trygstad took 2nd in G along with the coveted "dead last" award. Sue was running the Tombstone Trail for the first time in 30 years with her daughter Jessica who drove all the way from South Dakota for the event.

The best costume award went to Max (actually Bethanie) Hinkley and Katryna Hinkley for their Zombie Princess and Marvin the Martian.

Thanks to Vicki Larson, who co-rallymastered the event with me, and to Erik Dahl and Vicki Larson for their help with registration and scoring.

Mark Larson
Rallymaster

You can see the event results here.

Read the 2010 report.