Road Warriors!

That's right - it's time for me to pester you... err ... I mean, pump you up for joining the perfect kick-off to the 2005 driving season - the 10th Annual Missouri Endurance Rally and 3rd Annual Missouri Mini-Endurance Trial - March 19-20, 2005.

The stop locations have been picked and they may be on some of the most beautiful roads yet driven! As is tradition, all stops will be within the Great State of Missouri (of course, who needs the boring roads of another state?). Get your maps ready and do all the checks on your car. These next few weeks are going to fly by and the last thing you want to do is miss this event. (I'm still seeking volunteers to track their mileage using a GPS. I would like to run comparisons against what the odometers are getting.)

The host hotel is the Red Roof Inn at 11837 Lackland Rd in St Louis (I-270 and Page). For reservations call 314-991-4900 and tell them you're with the British Car or MG Club Rally just so we'll get credit towards the conference room.

The plan is to hold the driver's meeting at 6:30 a.m. on Saturday, March 19. Please be prompt because we're going to try hard to stay on schedule. Once released teams running in the full endurance rally will have until 9:00 a.m. Sunday, March 20 to make it back. Teams competing in the mini-endurance trial will have until midnight Saturday night. Last year, the mini-trial was the most competitive with the difference between 2nd and 3rd place being only 1/10th of a mile!

For those of you who are not familiar with endurance rallies, you will be given a list of locations to drive to and gain proof that you were there (in this rally that will mean answering a set of questions of what you find at the location). The trick is to pick the correct order in which to take the stops and then find the shortest distance between those stops so that the team returning by the deadline after covering the LEAST number of miles, wins! The full rally will have 10-12 stops and the mini will have 5-6 stops.

Trust me - you do not want to miss this! Let the people you work with talk around the water cooler on Monday the 21st about going to a movie or shopping at the mall. You can regale them with tales about how you took on one of the toughest classic car events around! Why do the ordinary when you can do the extraordinary?!?!