Another 3200 miles, Overcrest Rally '22 trip report Options

[Optimusglen]

The trip has come and gone and as promised here is a trip report. It was, in a word, wonderful.

My report for last year's OC Rally is here if you're interested, it sets the stage a bit for my, my car, the rally, etc.

Of course, my build thread here with some updates and fixes before I left.


After the success of last year's OC Rally, I was excited to find out what they had in store for this year. It had all the ingredients of a great time: the spirit of adventure, a limited group size, non-snobbery of driver/vehicle selection, and time spent with friends old and new.

The location shifted north, and was now in early September to better avoid potential snow or cold weather. Our starting point: Challis Idaho.

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Just like last year, getting to the start was a battle of it's own. Sure, the car was "proven" now, 3400 miles to Utah was likely to work out most of the bugs, but there were some things I had done in the interim, and old cars are always a mystery it seems.

Now, my schedule the week before was a little hairy too. That Tuesday was my daughter's first day of kindergarten and I wasn't about to miss getting her off the bus. So Tuesday evening I hit the road. Destination: the middle of nowhere North Dakota.

[Optimusglen]

Wednesday, September 7th

The next morning I called a few tire places ahead of me on my route. My tire size isn't rare, but fairly uncommon. Fortunately, I found a place near my stop for the following night, made an appointment, then hit the road. This time keeping a closer eye, I didn't need another flat...

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This was the hottest day of the drive with a peak of 104 F, flying through the flats of North Dakota and Eastern Montanna was just a dry hot tornado inside the car.

I pulled into Billings, Montana and found my tire shop and had a new tire mounted.

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Yes, I could have had the matching tire swapped to the Fuchs, and the new spare put on the other wheel, but at this point, I kind of liked the mismatched wheel, and I wanted all 4 tires to match.

After this, I found my AirBnB for the night and got settled in, then went out to grab some food. The place I was staying had street parking only, and periodically through the evening I would move the car closer to the front of the place. On my final move I got out, shut the door, and realized that I was now locked out of the car, with the key in the ignition...

As you can see, the lock tab was just barely engaged...
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I walked around the car a few times thinking about it, then sent Eric (PMB) a message to see if he knew of any super secret methods of getting into a 914. Eric was kind enough to walk me through a method that maybe just might work, it did involve taking a knife from my AirBnB and bending it up a bit though... I grabbed one, and tried to bend it, but these people had some nice expensive utensils and without a vice it was proving to be difficult. I also didn't want to slip and cut my hand open, or worse. So I called AAA.

AAA (not a sponsor) is the best tool to bring on a road trip. They had a guy show up 5 minutes later, and it took him all of 45 seconds to get in. Go figure.

With the keys now in my hand, I locked it up and went in to go to bed.