This year’s Missouri Endurance Rally a very different format to previous years and not a navigational skill to cover minimum distance to reach set check points. Instead it was based on the Moss challenge where you gained points for taking photos of you & your car with certain objects/signs. For example a state was worth 10 points, a state park 5 points. Town & County names got 1 point for each one starting with a different letter of the alphabet. There were bonus points e.g. your picture with a police officer was worth 5 points.

There was also 5 points for a road kill deer, but the only one we saw was on the side of I-55 & it wasn't safe or legal to stop. You also got a point for specific objects like a covered bridge or a caboose, ice rink, statue of a general, WW1 monument and so on. Some were worth more points than others.
This statue of a UK citizen was worth 3 points:

Unlike the traditional format any form of navigation assistance was permitted, maps, gazetteers, GPS, phones, laptops etc. We ended up with 99 points and placed 7th/13. The winner managed 125 so it got competitive at the top and we got pretty close. A few more points would have seen a big change in our placing.

Pros & Cons of this system:

*	It was nice not to have to concentrate on directions so much. The navigator actually got to see some countryside!
*	It was fun looking for point scoring opportunities that could just appear when you turned a corner.
*	Because most points wins there is a tendency to try squeeze more in and with the cut off time of 9pm this results in a natural pressure on the team to rush & speed. That was the biggest negative & puts me off this format the most.
*	The need to stop and take a photo can lead to the team potentially putting themselves into safety compromises, e.g. the deer road kill mentioned above.
*	I appreciated being finished & in bed at 10pm rather than still driving.
*	You have to balance charging down the interstate with taking the smaller roads so you can get towns & counties in. To keep that balance the organizers gave bonus points to the most single points gained and this changed the results of the top 3 or 4 teams. The downside of this is it depends on your competition and you don’t know until the reckoning at the end.
*	The format meant the organizers could set the rally up without the need to drive a route & set up check points, as there were none pre-specified. That meant it was much more of a ‘free form’ & random event, even so we did see other competitors en-route.
*	There was also none of the usual odometer calibration stuff.

The rally was challenging and we were able to complete the course with a good score - there is always next year!

~~ Steve Skegg