We are less than two weeks away from the 2014 Rally of the Tall Pines. The roads are in great shape, the Routebook and Notes have been finalized and printed and the Start Order has been set. Check it out on the Pines website at www.tallpinesrally.com in the Competitor Section.
All the top CRC (Canadian Rally Championship) teams have entered, including Antoine L’Estage/Alan Ockwell, Martin Rowe/Nathalie Richard and Alexandre Beland with co-driver TBA. All the top 2WD teams are entered as well, including Simon Dube/Pat Lavigne plus the young U.S. hotshoe Will Hudson with co-driver John Hall.
The RSO OPRC Championship has been hotly contested this year and will be settled at the Pines. In the Overall all top teams will be there including Alan Ryall/Bruce Leonard, Andrew Kulikowski/Kelly Mathew and Martin Donnelly/Angela Cosner. In 2WD it will be fought out between Andrew Kulikowski/Kelly Mathew, Kurt Thiel/Russell Norton and Martin Walter/Ferdinand Trauttmansdorff.
At this point 188 workers have signed up. We are fine for Thursday & Friday now, but we could still use quite a few more helpers on rally day – Saturday, November 29th, including HAM Radio Operators, Traffic Control blockers, Start/Finish Control workers and Spectator Area marshals.If you are available but have not registered, please go to the Pines website at www.tallpinesrally.com then to Worker Registration and complete your profile. Note, if you have changed your email address since last year, enter as a New Registrant and mention it also under Suggestions for me to update it on my group email list. If you have any difficulty doing that, contact me directly at ross@tallpinesrally.com. We rely heavily on the database for making our worker assignments, so please complete the registration. If something has changed in your plans, remember to update your profile and send me an email. We can accommodate requests for late arrivals and early departures. Do not hesitate to contact me to discuss your requests.
As an incentive to recruit new workers, any currently registered worker who brings along a brand new volunteer will be entered in two Draws (1) any extra ticket in the Draw for the Clearwater Design kayak and (2) an entry in a Draw for a Shakedown ride on Friday evening.
I have been exchanging e-mails with many of you already about specific assignments or to follow up on information that you posted in your Worker Profile. For those of you who have not heard anything yet, our committee meeting to finalize assignments is Wednesday the 19th. We will be posting a full list of assignments within a day or two after that. I can assure you that we read your comments carefully and that we will be trying to match your requests if possible. If you are not certain whether you signed up or not, just email worker_registration at tallpinesrally dot com  and we will check.
Trish Groom has been very busy helping workers arrange accommodations, but a few of you have not signed up yet. Elmer’s and Limerick are both full, but we still have some subsidized spaces available for workers at Cedar Ridge Camp. So sign up ASAP. For assistance contact Trish at accommodations at tallpinesrally dot com
HAM operators will want to get your radios set up in advance. Repeater frequencies will be 147.285 with a tone of 118.8, 146.610 with a tone of 100.0 and 147.180 (no tone) and 147.000 (no tone). In addition we will be using several simplex frequencies – 146.520, 146.550 and 146.580. These are all the same as last year except for 147.000.
We are becoming more and more active on social media. If you haven’t done so already, why not join the Facebook page (Rally of the Tall Pines)? You can also follow the rally on Twitter @TallPines Rally.  In addition we will have an app again for Android phones that will help keep you up to speed at   https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=barnes.matt.tallpinesrally

Plus the Spectator Guide is now available as a flip-book at   http://tinyurl.com/tallpines2014

And an exciting brand new feature – Mark Williams has created a tracking system for rally cars and will be running a public demo of five cars at  http://motoring-event-services.com/rallytracking/TallPines.html





Remember – the Worker Meeting is on Friday the 28th at 9 PM at Rally HQ.
More news to follow soon.

Ross Wood, Clerk of the Course
ross at tallpinesrally dot com