User:Darin

My wife and I entered our first TRC gimmick rallye in August, 2001. Actually, I drove, a friend navigated, and my wife was a passenger. But since then, we've been a two-person team (she navigates and I drive), and we've been involved somehow with almost every TRC gimmick rallye—if not as rallyists, then as rallyemasters, precheckers, and/or CP workers. I've also taught classroom gimmick rallye schools.

I was TRC's president from 2005–2007. I started 2008 as a board member at large, but took over as Secretary mid-year.

Favorite Missed Gimmicks

Of the gimmicks that we've missed, here are some of our favorites:

• In Indecision 2008 (November 2008), there were two spaces to record CM AA on the score sheet, therefore the language was in place to allow recording other CMs in multiple spaces. One of the TBs included the letter A, and there was space next to that letter A, therefore we were supposed to record CM A in two places: in the CM section of the score sheet, and in the space next to the letter A in the TB.
• In Drive for Show, Rallye for Dough! (September 2008), a numbered Hazard instruction appeared on the RI page. Since it was labeled "Hazard", it was a valid Hazard instruction. Since it was numbered, it was also a valid RI. The rules for both Hazard instructions and RIs applied to this instruction.
• In Get Smart (August 2008), we were told to use a cipher that mapped shapes to letters. Along the route, we encountered a yellow caution sign that depicted a unique street configuration and recommended a speed of 15. The cipher converted the shape of the street configuration to a letter, and the sign became a valid "Q 15" coursemarker.
• On one leg of The Amazing Rallye III (July 2008), we were told when RIs came into effect and went out of effect. We were also told that the exception to that was RI 1, which came into effect after the start traverse. Thus, RI 1 never went out of effect, and we were able to execute it again later in the rallye.
• In Three Strikes and You're Out (April 2008), we received a CP slip that told us to delete a specific sentence from our GIs. However, the sentence that appeared in our GIs was not quite the same as the one we were told to delete. Thus, we could not delete anything.
• In 24 (February 2008), a U was defined as a turn of about 180°. At one point in the rallye, the digit 1 no longer existed, changing the definition of U to a turn of about 80°. A close second was removing every other letter from the "Lynn Way" street sign. Since the abbreviations for Lane and Way did not exist on the "Ln Wy" sign, Lynn Way was unnamed, and therefore no longer a valid road.
• In Courting Disaster (September 2007), just before we entered the CP, a higher-precedence instruction preempted RI 20. After asking us which RI we were working on, the CP personnel gave us a CP slip that told us to CRI 21. However, the definition of CRI only brought RI 21 into effect; it did not delete or take out of effect RI 20. Later, after executing RI 21, we had an opportunity to execute RI 20.
• In Monster Bash (October 2005), the GIs told us to execute RIs containing the word "at" by turning where the words after "at" appeared on a sign. Even though "CS" was undefined, we were able to execute an RI that told us to "CS at Cardinal" by turning at the "Cardinal" street sign.
• In Car Wars III: Revenge of the SI (July 2005), the GIs deleted a street name (everywhere "outside this sentence"). With the street name deleted, an RI became just "R AT", and since nothing appeared after "AT", the RI could be done at any street sign.
• In Critter Chaos (December 2004), we were told to hand our score sheet to the "correct critter" at the on-course CP. The workers at the first three on-course CPs were dressed as critters, but the worker at the last on-course CP was not dressed as a critter, and explicitly told us "I am not a critter." We were not supposed to give our score sheet to this worker.
• In Dyslexia (November 2004), the street names in the RIs were anagrammed. One of the anagrams was missing a letter, so we should not have executed the RI.
• In Mystery! (September 2004), a gimmick caused us to read signs backwards. After recording CM AB in the BA space on our score sheet, the gimmick went out of effect, which allowed us to read CM AB correctly. We should have recorded it in the AB space on our score sheet too.
• In Starsky & Hutch (May 2004), we could not execute the last part of a Supp. We continued straight for partial credit, but we should have realized that the next RI was already in effect, and that we could do it early for full credit.
• In Car Drek Enterprize (November 2003), we passed a parallel CM that did not have a valid Supp. We continued past it to a second CM. The Supp for the second CM sent us back past the first parallel CM. Upon re-encountering the first CM, we were supposed to delete the uncompleted Supp parts from the second CM.
• In The Out-of-Towners (June 2003), thieves stole a couple of words from all signs. At a CP, we received a slip that told us that the thieves had been caught, that their loot had been recovered, and that the stolen words now appeared on all street-naming signs. But that meant that they appeared on all street-naming signs, not just on the ones on which they had originally appeared.
• In Return of Rallye to Middle Earth (February 2003), a variation on the Aristotle prohibited us from completing consecutively numbered instructions at the same intersection. At one intersection, we executed RI 6. Later, after denying a bad CM at the same intersection, a CM brought Supp 5 into effect. Since Supp 5 and RI 6 are consecutively numbered, we should not have completed Supp 5 at this intersection.
• In Volcano (July 2002), there was a CP just past an intersection that was covered by a lava flow to a depth of 10 cm. While we could not drive through the intersection to reach the CP, we could park our vehicle and walk to the CP on the sidewalk (which was protected from the shallow lava flow by a curb that was higher than 4 inches).

Other Interests

My wife and I also enjoy riding our ViewPoint tandem bicycle, organic gardening, and playing board and card games like The Settlers of Catan, TransAmerica, Lost Cities, The Big Idea, Quiddler, and Spy Game. I also enjoy geocaching, and am a member of Geocachers of the Bay Area.

In 1998, I accepted an invitation to join the Web Design Group, which was founded to promote the creation of creative, informative, browser-independent, and resolution-independent web sites that are accessible to all users worldwide.

I am a software release engineer for a local dot-com company.