The Map Rally is back!

Three Mazdas entered the rally to Nocona last month, one of these was a Miata.

Our next competition is the annual map rally.

The DFW Map Rally will be held on Saturday, May 30. It will start in Garland, and end in Rockett, Texas. We will ask you to locate a dozen or so points on a map, and drive to them all and to the finish, in the shortest distance.

Leaving Gateway Buick/GMC (LBJ at Jupiter Road), you will drive a 30-mile odometer check, which ends at the Commemorative Air Force facility near Wilmer, Texas. You will have some time to examine the WWII-era aircraft that are based there, all of them still operational. Then we will use their classroom as a work area for you to examine your map(s) and determine your route. When you are ready, you will start your drive, ending at the Rockett Cafe & Club for lunch and awards. Rockett is about 8 miles from the CAF hangar as the crow flies, or 13 miles by surface roads. You will probably drive over 70 miles in finding all the assigned points, then driving to Rockett.

As usual, any street-legal car with two or more people old enough to read can enter. No special car prep is necessary. Just bring a clip board and a pencil, fill up your gas tank, and you are ready to go. There is a First Timer's class, in case you have never done any road rallying before. Low total miles travelled wins.

You can register online by going to msreg.com/DMR15msr. This is an advantage because then you will be sent the "General Instructions" for the event by email, five or six days prior to the event.

Join us!

Old enough to read? That"s the first test..

Six cars have entered the Map Rally. I'm not surprised that people are waiting, with all the unsettled weather we have been having. Two things should change that:

The long-range forecast shows May 30 to be the fifth in a string of warm and sunny days, so any ill effects from all that rain should be long gone.

And don't forget that even though MotorsportReg asks for your credit card info when you preregister there, you are not actually charged until after the event, Sunday or Monday I expect.

I test ran the rally on one dry day last week after several days of serious rain, and had no problem with the roads. My route ended up with 0.6 miles of gravel roads in one leg, and about 0.1 mile on another. No problems at all in either place. Of course you may not use the same roads that I did, but the Ellis county roads I saw were in fine shape. I'm not going to tell you how many miles I took until after the event.

So come join the Porsche, Mustang, VW, Subaru, etc. for a great drive from Wilmer to Rockett, by whatever route you think will score the most points in the least miles. msreg.com/DMR15msr is the place.