Between the 27th and 29th of March, Cabana Nora in Raul Sadului, Sibiu was the host of the “Phoenix – Song of the Swan” memorial for Bogdan Patru.

The meeting was organized as a competition with two classes – Open and Extreme -, roadbook, specials and qualifications. The first day was the prologue, having us (the Open class) descend through a mountain creek with HUGE boulders, in order to establish the starting grid for Saturday. On Saturday, we had 80km of track, with some 150 positions on the roadbook. The track was very easy, with literally no problems beside the roadbook.

Both my copilot and I were at the first encounter with a roadbook, and we had a GPS program simulating the TerraTrip . The program was allrgiht, but we did have some trouble following the roadbook, especially at positions 24, 57 and 107. Position 107 was also where the day was cut off, due to some problems with an area the track was supposed to go through.

That is why the final standing was drawn using the times in the special. Luckily, both my team mate and I ruled the special (under 1 minute as opposed to ~ 10-15 minutes for some contestants) so we were designated winners of the Open class :-O .

It was a lot of fun, we had a 10 minutes break to confer with a friend that lived in Sibiu (yes, we did take a detour and went to his house in Sibiu!), we managed to find a checkpoint hidded in some bushes, and we used a roadook for the first time. Driving all day long however, was not a proper setting for pictures, so there are only a few:

I am also using this picture somebody took with a mobile phone to show you what followed immediately after the second checkpoint (actually, it was the third, but NOBODY got the first one 🙂 )