Doo Wops 2012

+1.Let's go!

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heymagic
In all likely hood DW is memories.

It's important for everyone to remember that there is no "momentum" for rallies. Actual momentum is like a block on a frictionless surface: once it's going, it just keeps going. With rallies, it's the opposite: as soon as some dedicated people stop pushing, the event stops instantly. There is no momentum.

Now, events certainly do grow, the number of people involved and contacts made can grow, which reduce the friction for next year's event to happen. But really, it's like you start with a friction coefficient of 0.85 and get it down to 0.8. That's still miles away from zero.

This year there were 9 rallies cancelled in this country. Just based on the above I expect few to return, ever.

Lessons:

1) If there's a rally you want to go to, enter it. There's no guarantee that ANY particular rally will be around next year.

2) Expect the landscape of rallies to change, and be very different, in five years time. Just like now is different from five years ago.

Cheers,
Anders

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Grassroots rally. It's what I think about.

Another great post Anders.

Rallys continue only because a person or group is not only willing to 'push' themselves but have the ability to inspire (threaten, blackmail, lie, drug) others to help. At some point the organizer is really the head of a decent sized company with a couple hundred employees. That would be a lot of great self starter employess mixed with some brand new, no experience, essentially clueless employees. It is a daunting task. Hundreds of hours, bazillions of phone calls and questions, neck stuck out a mile. The reward being not financial, but emotional. You/we did it. It worked, people loved it. There is great satisfaction in wining a stage or rally, same with organizing an event...right up to the point a protest hits, or bad accident, or Farmer Jones freaking out because he didn't read the road closure taped to the mail box, or the bitching starts because one stage was too rough, or the road fees doubled and someones check bounced or, or, or...

DooWop started because Ray thought we had too much down time. The new SCCA divisional program had been started. It was just one road as Dave mentioned, in the Capital Forest. Turned into multiple events on mulitple roads. Seems like we had either 3 or 4 events in a yearly series (Dave??). I think I won the first series over all (Dave???). Ray even put on a National but just didn't care for the flavor of that. He loved divisional events and local ralliests. Yet he mad many geat rally friends from the national series, Rod Millen being one. Ray even went and crewed for Millen in Asia when he ran over there, but Ray's passion was the DooWops. He did everything possible to keep the events fun and affordable and was hugely sucessful. DooWops became a 'happening'. There were people who only ran DooWops and no other event. Towards the end we saw entries drop, volunteers drop, much more work and stress. Just a sign of the times and not a reflection on Rays efforts or abilities, but things and times change.

I can't say for certain DW is gone, but odds are....

Palix though..I'll work on Steve, we'll see.

Either or. I like 2 passes 1 way, then turn around, 2 passes the other way. I don't mind a 20 minute transit.

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heymagic
Another great post Anders.

Two in one week! I often hear that I'm "full of it", glad you're on that bandwagon!

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heymagic
Rallys continue only because a person or group is not only willing to 'push' themselves but have the ability to inspire (threaten, blackmail, lie, drug) others to help.

Wow, I see that I've been using only 20% of the available tools. I'm such a sucker!

Anders

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Grassroots rally. It's what I think about.

Whatever is decided on the Doo Wop situation, I will support it for the rest of my days. It was the first rally I ever ran and the most fun I've had at a rally so far. I had no idea it was to be its last year.

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Anders Green

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heymagic
Another great post Anders.

Two in one week! I often hear that I'm "full of it", glad you're on that bandwagon!

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heymagic
Rallys continue only because a person or group is not only willing to 'push' themselves but have the ability to inspire (threaten, blackmail, lie, drug) others to help.

Wow, I see that I've been using only 20% of the available tools. I'm such a sucker!

Anders

Anders, you have one more incentive, Umbrella girls!

The first 2 or 3 years it was just a one road rallysprint format. There were 3 events in the series, one in February, one in March, and one in April. Ray would give out 45rpm records as trophies, the song titles relevant in some way. (Like, "Hang On" for the driver and "Almost Made It" for the codriver.) There would also be trophies for the Doo Wop Series championship. Later it turned into the Doo Wop Mini Rally series with two or more roads used. It expanded to four events over two weekends in February and March.

I am Thankful that I got to start my rally career at a Doo Wops event, and saddened that they may not continue.

I personally would take a Doo Wop Rally over an Olympus any day...

Be the change you want to see, people. You want a Doo Wops (or a similarly sprited event under a different name) make it happen.

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Grassroots rally. It's what I think about.

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Anders Green
Be the change you want to see, people. You want a Doo Wops (or a similarly sprited event under a different name) make it happen.

Easier said than done.
Ray had contacts.
Those contacts and deep personal relationships were protected and kept in his head.

Everybody out here in organising acts the same way in that respect..
Those contacts are closely held...

Quote" We have our reputation to think about, we can't just be giving them out to anybody".

The resistance to"passing the baton" cripples development, keeps organising in the tightest of cliques for decades.

Egos at their worst.

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John Vanlandingham
Sleezattle, WA, USA

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat

www.rallyrace.net/jvab
CALL +1 206 431-9696
Remember! Pacific Standard Time
is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time.

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john vanlandingham

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Anders Green
Be the change you want to see, people. You want a Doo Wops (or a similarly sprited event under a different name) make it happen.

Easier said than done.
Ray had contacts.
Those contacts and deep personal relationships were protected and kept in his head.

Everybody out here in organising acts the same way in that respect..
Those contacts are closely held...

Quote" We have our reputation to think about, we can't just be giving them out to anybody".

The resistance to"passing the baton" cripples development, keeps organising in the tightest of cliques for decades.

Egos at their worst.

True and false all at the same time. Organizers do develope relationships with land owners and the like. Just comes with the territory. And there is a sense of 'ownership' . Protecting that relationship or the roads is simply protecting that event and the hundreds or thousands of hours spent to get to that point. The thought being that another group or person could come in use the roads already gained and quite possibly lose the roads. Wrong thing said, no follow up, messes left, bills unpaid and so on.

When Ray stepped down the event he offered the event to me. I declined immediately. I don't have the time or desire and porbably not the ability. I suggested Barker as I thought he had the qualities to do it. The 'keys' were handed to him. Pages of info, names on tablets, names on scraps of paper, notes were taken. I was present when this occured and know it to be true. Nothing was held back. It went off the next year but Ron lost money, probably didn't have all that much fun and who knows what else. No one is obligated to keep doing this and shouldn't be expected to.

Ray didn't keep things close because of ego, he was protecting his event and hard work. I'd guess other organizers do the same and rightfully so. Same as you try to protect the stuff you've figured out, shock valving, resources, construction techniques. Billions are spent in this country each year stealing and protecting designs and ideas.

Ray legally owned the DW name and Janice still does. The roads are public roads, anyone can go apply to Grays Harbor or Pacific County. I'll gladly point them to the buildings. The Quinault Tribe is pretty easy to find also....have at it. Just don't call it DooWops without permission and attorneys.

OBTW, Ray did hand the event over to Forespring and company once several years ago. It was screwed up, and an accident happened. After sherriff responding it seems the local authorities weren't informed prior to the event. BIG cluster f...Ray had to take the event back and really put some work into it to keep the permissions in place.

Ray and Janice also handed the Brooklyn Bash over to others. That ran something like 2 years and then collapsed.

This isn't an easy task, organizing an event or finding roads. Disrespectful comments such as yours really just adds to the reasons not to organize. Shame on you.

Gawddamit Gene it wasn't directed at Ray---it was directed at every single other person I have ever bothered to ask about "the process' ---until the message sank in and i stopped even whispering about the subject.

I'm talking about the flack that like--as in similar to--the crap you talked about when you went down to Oregon. Fiefdoms, territoriality. Even when people know they're tiring of the whole schmeer....

Or the utter bullshit Charles Buren got when he suggested a regular "watch rally vids, drink beer and talk about whatever meeting" . "You should have check with us first"..

Shame on you for thinking I'd say something disrespectful unjustifiably.
BAILIFF! Whack his pee-pee!

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John Vanlandingham
Sleezattle, WA, USA

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat

www.rallyrace.net/jvab
CALL +1 206 431-9696
Remember! Pacific Standard Time
is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time.

Well then ya shoulda been more specific. Talk about Ray in one sentence then bad behavior in the next, now kiss and make up, eeeeeeew

And let's get back to talking about ways to go and run Palix and Smith and Brooklyn and..

Well, I suppose one could get the same permissions to run these roads so long as you didn't use the Doo Wops name. As Gene stated, that is owned by another person... but not the road permissions.

If you took it back to what it was like in the beginning and made 3-4 Rally in a box sprint style runs and made a mini series, it may be more affordable/easier to organize/better chance of Anders sending his umbrella girls up. (ok, maybe not so much the last one... )

Just name it something else and work from there. Start with palix for the reasons discussed above.


It just takes someone to step up and do it. You've all RUN Doowops. Think about how people who have missed it and just heard about it must feel. Me, having been around before it was gone, and now that it's gone, I'm sorta in the middle. I was around for it, crewing and then shooting it, but I never drove it. So I don't feel like I missed EVERYTHING. A lot of the fun of Doo Wops was the more laid back atmosphere that Olympus on the same roads didn't have. When I shot Oly, it was a job. It was all work. It was fun, but it was work. When I was shooting Doo Wops, it was just fun. Part of it was why I was shooting, but part of it was what happened before and after I was shooting on stage.

I'd like to run these roads someday. As I'm sure many of you would like to run them again. But some of us have wifes, husbands, and children. Some of us have jobs that we can't miss out on. Some of us have school. We have bills. To do lists. Life. It's funny how life can get in the way.

If the current group of organizers needs a break from running a Doo Wops rally, let them breathe. I think we could start a really good mini series, like Dave mentioned Doo Wops used to be, with decent success. We already have the ruins of a rally to build on. We know what roads to use, and that we were able to use them before. The locals seem to like us, and the hotel managers probably don't complain about filling up quicker. It wouldn't be all the work of building a NEW rally.

Now, I can't spearhead this. I don't know enough about it to even begin to figure it out. But I'm willing to help. If anyone wants to try and get something going again PM me.

So that's my $0.02. Let's start with Palix and make a mini series of rally in a box sprints built on the ruins of a great rally.