This was a fun event.  You can't beat the feeling of a warm, small town welcome.  After tech was complete, the competitors staged their cars for a parade through town.  As our cars slowly progressed through the small streets of Goldendale, we were adorned by the local residents.  Both sides of the street were lined with people of all ages.  It was GREAT! 

We were grateful for the cloud cover on Saturday.  It was a blistering 95º with humidity around 60%.  Not quite what we expected.  Our first coarse, A4 was extremely technical.  From the start gate we S'ed through large rocks and closely placed cones.  Unlike numerous competitors, we had little difficulty with the majority of the coarse, due the portals and great team work.  The exit to A4 was not so friendly.  It was a 17 foot vertical climb with powdery thick dirt at the bottom, posing traction issues and a centrally located ravine waiting to swallow someone up.  In addition to the lack of traction there was a large tree stump at the top in line with the exit cones and a tree at the bottom.  Melanie stacked the bottom to assist with the traction issue.  Ron had to Get Some if he was going to make it.  He did...after laying the car on her side three times we thought he had it.  Nemesis was almost over the crest of the climb when all of the sudden, over she went.  Nemesis went end over end and side over side, landing in the coarse next to us.  Ron was completely unharmed and aside from some cosmetic damage, so was Nemesis.

The remainder of day one went off without a hitch.  The courses were technical and the powdery, thick dirt posed problems for competitors all day.  Going into Sunday we were sitting in 11th place.  Considering our DNF on A4 from Saturday, we were extremely pleased.  Sunday went off without a hitch.  We found out from one of the judges that on Sunday we were one of four cars that completed coarse B3 out of thirty cars that had attempted the course for the day.  I'm sure it had something to do with strategically stacking rocks to make the vertical climb.