First, you have to get there: Merritt BC, 250 miles give or take from here. Crossing the border was uneventful even with four spare tires and two tool boxes visible. (It may have been eventful for Co-Driver, he has a lasting impression of the blonde border guard). Eastward to Hope and then the Coquihalla into the snow!!! We were lucky, we only saw the aftermath of several errant excursions, others later in the evening came close to participating… Spinouts, fender benders, rollovers, all non-rallyists.

Saturday AM Breakfast Party, Registration, Tech. Inspection… Rewiring the driving lights in the parking lot during the novice meeting to cure "grounding problem" (lights just refused to go out even when switched off!). We think it’s fixed, go to the drivers’s meeting and get a nod from an official that we’re passed. Drivers are cautioned that they may encounter some deep snow in the higher elevations… There is snow on the parking lot and it’s twenty degrees. Eight miles into the Odo Check and the RCMP and Aid Car and Tow Truck celebrate the day’s start, along with the rollover in the median, not part of the rally. We are all parked at the end of the Odo when the RCMP comes alongside and politely suggests we move on, we’re obstructing a public road. Our time comes up so we oblige. We start the first Regularity looking for a KL MBCU (Caution at driver’s meeting was: "This is plowed right, not plowed left…"). Great. Deep snow, getting deeper, Acute Left coming up, Let’s See… No dramatics just go ahead and use the reverse and stay on the road! Out of the deep onto the icy and fast paved then back to the really deep. BR CAS 28, where we catch rally traffic that missed the BR and are trying to make up a minute.

Next couple of instructions are Caution! Exposure. No matter, you really can’t get up enough speed to get out of the wheel tracks, which is OK until the tracks go where you don’t want to go. Kisela/Jensen make a shallow right into a very wide right but miss the tree and power-on to regain the proper line. The end of this leg is a short narrow steep downhill to Acute Right at Stop. Evidently the contol car couldn’t get in to set the control and everyone was stacked up (figuratively) at the Stop being instructed to add 30 minutes to the Transit ("Pass it on"). At the end of the Transit Car One is missing, evidently ahead of the control worker and unaware of the extra time. Car Seven is the first of the two wheel drive cars and eventually arrives. Car Six is missing. The 30 minutes pass and Car Six (Glenn Wallace/Richard Squire) shows up to the very welcome news of the extended transit, no control, and all of their off-course excursion was without penalty. You could here the cheers two cars up. We continue through several legs without any difficulty until a Driver/Navigator "discussion" ensues over "CAS 100m after Stop"… "CAS What?"… "It doesn’t say"… "Look up the Generals"… "Change Average Speed"… "To What"… "It doesn’t say"… We compromised, just keep going… "This is pretty slow for this road"… Car Six catches us doing 35 or better so I figure 26 is out and I take off. This would have been great if the speedo hadn’t picked just this time to start adding indicated speed on its own. 3500 in 3^rd gear is about 35 MPH, it now reads 55, now it’s up to 70, still 3500, still 3^rd gear: Time to get creative. "Assuming" the Odo is still working we start a chart of Gear position to RPM to Time (GRT) over a tenth, a half, close estimate of Miles Per Hour. It works. It works just in time for "AR Exposure!" then "Extreme Caution" and some 40mph stuff over a cattle guard (we never saw Glenn & Richard again after that until the Transit). The Transits were quick and then 27 miles into the next Regularity (after "Caution Exposures and Hairpins next 2km") we find Car One, Dean Kokko driving Russ Kraushaar’s GTX, significantly OFF. A quick stop, they’re OK, they’ve already landed a ride with a local, and we’re chasing R. Dale’s 2.5 RS through the hairpins. (He won the chase and had more time to make up than we.) Later, the instruction read "OK Falls Forest Service Road (may be snow covered) CAS 44.7" Oh Yeah! Big White Ski Area brought the paved hillclimb but the control should have been at the end of the narrow twisty snowy downhill that went out the back side of Big White. We’re coming to the end of Day One, 36 miles into the last Regularity. Cattle Guard, Surface Change, Pavement, CAS 37… Sounds good, Whoa! This is slick! Downhill glare ice, forget the CAS, keep it between the ditches. Several odd looking patterns are in the ice… Someone is trying to sign their name in the road, beautiful flowing cursive letters… Sorry I couldn’t read it. We survive, finish Day One, think we’re leading the S.O.P./Paper class… Dinner, drinks, stories, hotel…

Day Two breakfast brings more stories and the revelation that the fire alarm woke most everyone up at 0200… Not us! (Hockey team prank??) We start the rally going up the most talked about downhill from last night. There is a fresh dusting of snowy powder over the ice now. Ten miles into the first Regularity we are cautioned on a hard right bend that the RallyMaster had gone straight here into the creek and that the mileage is approximate! We decide to turn right, we have enough mileage problems. The roads are great. We continue through Lumby, Trinity Valley, Salmon Arm, and start the Regularity at Turtle Valley CAS 44.7; Caution Hairpin Left; Road Deactivated (?); Caution Cows for 4km… 38 miles of fun. Onward still, through Chase, Duck Range, Monte Creek, Robbins Range, Barnhart Vale, and Campbell Creek to the Regularity we’d been warned about "The End Is Near" (something about too much snow!!??). This is part of the Thunderbird route, twisty, narrow, deep snow, exposure CAS 24.9… We’re calculating in long division 24.9 every tenth… up 6… up 4… up 2… OK… OK… Checkpoint—Wow! Then another quick control ½ km later. Pedestrians, dogs, control worker, all in the way, Whew! Is this Fun!… Dinner and Awards, First SOP/Paper, Thanks all around!

Totem 2000 included spectacular elevation changes, snow covered hillclimbs and sunny dry wooded sections running 566.95 miles over 18 hours of rallying. Congratulations to the West Coast Rally Association and Route Masters Paul Westwick and Andrew Dobric and their associates for an excellent BC summer rally (Winter Rules) and to the people in Merritt and Kelowna for their hospitality. We look forward to next season.

Ron Sorem/Josh Sorem