Having never been to a rally I wasn’t quite sure what to expect.  To be honest, I had pictures of airborne STI’s dancing in my head.
I cannot say that it didn’t happen but I didn’t see it, though I did see several Subies in various flavors.  I volunteered to to be a road marshal, hoping that I would get one of the best vantage points to view said rally.  Instead, we showed up only minutes before the volunteer deadline only to find out we were the second car there and nobody had a clue about what was going on.  After wandering around for an hour and talking to whoever was supposedly incharge we finally got a vest and a walkie-talkie and set off to get our “marshal positions.”  Score!  I was going to get a sweet vantage either by the wooptees or the hair-raising hairpin a mere minutes from my hometown.  What actually happened was we followed the team leader all the way to the finish of the 2nd stage with no placement.  Well sh*t, we couldn’t go back because the first sweep car was minutes behind us and they beckoned us to follow them up to the next stage because they were short-handed.  Sure, why not?  45 minutes later and in the middle of bfe we had a position.  A terrible spot at a 90 degree right with a cattle guard.  Sigh.  Though it did make for some great photos it was not terribly exciting.  We were positioned with the rescue/recovery crew which wasn’t all bad.  Minutes before the end of stage 3 I heard that 2 cars were “lost” just up from where we were.  So we chased the emt’s and sweep cars up the mountain after the stage was complete.  All I can say is it pays to be a volunteer because you get to go to places and see things nobody else does:

Driver and co-pilot were not hurt, this was the result of teetering on the edge of a ravine and flopping over.  Interestingly enough, the second “lost” vehicle was also a ZX3, though this one looks like it got a bit more exciting:

Though we only spent a half day wandering through the Idaho Wilderness, we had a great time.  On day two, while I was sitting on the patio enjoying a delicious cold beer, I was listening to amateur traffic on the scanner and heard about another car fully engulfed in flames.  Idaho can be a cruel bitch.
Come back tomorrow for some exclusive photos and video!
Idaho Rally