I'm not a fan of nose-to-tail drives. They're just not my thing. I'd rather have a destination and drive semi-independently.

That said, it would be fun to put some sort of competition. I'm thinking of a TSD-type rally, updated. For you whippersnappers, TSD stands for time-speed-distance.

The traditional TSD rally was labor intensive, with a lot of check points which requires a lot of personnel, and since people really don't want to man a desk when they can be driving, I've come up with an idea that I think would work to reduce the manpower (OK, personpower).

A rally means reaching a point at a specified time, not early or late. There are time penalties for arriving late, and bigger penalties for arriving early. What I'm thinking is that a route could be planned with the distance between checkpoints being a strict basic distance, and time between checkpoints would be based on the shortest time possible at the posted speed limit. Of course, that doesn't account for stop signs, anti-destination league drivers, etc, so some, um, catching uip might be required to stay on schedule.

Departures would be say two minutes apart so you shouldn't be up against someone else's tailpipe too soon. We wouldn't have manned (personned) checkpoint, but rather a landmark that has to be photographed and emailed in, and the email of course has a timestamp.

That takes care of being late. We can't punish people for being early, however, to prevent people from arriving early at a checkpoint and leaving early to "bank" time, their leaving a checkpoint would be verified by sending in another photo no earlier than their scheduled departure time.

No, wait they could take a photo and send it at their departure time even though they're already underway. Can we rely on the honor system, or does someone know how we can solve this problem. We would want every leg to be an independent challenge.

There would be no route provided. Rather, the rallymaster would determine the quickest route possible and the time required for each leg. Then the checkpoints would be provided to each car say, one hour before before staged departure time. The team would bring whatever map they can get their hands on and from that figure out the best route.

The variables presented by this of course include map reading skills--did I mention that any kind of navigation system would be prohibited, and really, we'd have to trust people's honor for this. It would also mean that the shortest route might include some (small) town that might present an obstacle and might be better if a bypass might be preferable. Of course, c'mon, if an Interstate might be available, the superslab would be off limits.

The rally would wind up at a preplanned destination that everyone would know in advance, and an awards dinner of some sort would be held...complete with trophies as small as possible An entry fee would cover the cost.

Thoughts?