by Randy Wright
Covid19 made 2020 a year of disappointment for the car enthusiast. Event after event was cancelled. One of the things I look forward to every year is participating in at least one of the few remaining TSD Rallyes, the Yadkin Valley Invitational or the Moonshine Rallye, but not in 2020 as all events were cancelled. In the Fall of 2020, Tom Young asked me if I had ever heard of a rallye-like event that was conducted on maps called “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre”? “YES!”, I said as I had last participated in that event in 1980 while a member of the Albuquerque Sports Car Club. Tom and I decided to enter the even
t as the “CVBMC Rallye Team”.
So, you say, what is the “St Valentine’s Day Massacre” all about? It’s a rallye that all takes place on maps. The event has been going on for 57 years and is run by a Californian named Jim Sinclair who goes by the moniker “The Old Maltese”. The Old Maltese Webpage contains the following description:
We'll send you the giant 11x15 136-page 2021 Rand McNally Road Atlas and the St.. Valentine’s Day Massacre book of instructions.
By following the Massacre's auto rally kind of instructions, at your kitchen table or wherever you want, an hour or two at a time whenever you want, we travel on a continuous course over mountains and plains, from page to page in the atlas, from the Statue of Liberty to the Golden Gate Bridge.
2021 has been declared the International Year of Fruits and Vegetables by the United Nations, and we're going to celebrate by visiting Cucumber [West Virginia], Spuds [Florida], Beanblossom [Indiana], Cherry [Minnesota], Tomato [Arkansas], Corn [Oklahoma], and Strawberry [Arizona] on our way across the continent.
Along the coast-to-coast course you'll get help from Farmer Misenheimer in West Virginia, Clerk Clark in South Carolina, Portia & Pete in Georgia, Ole Morken in Minnesota, Rolly Schweinezüchter in Iowa, Eikao Tsirotom in Oklahoma, and (yes!) The Old Maltese.
Entries are accepted continuously until Valentine's Day, February 14. (The completion deadline for everyone is March 8.)
We were in. Entry was submitted and we ordered a second Road Atlas so we could work independently. The package from the Old Maltese arrived in early January. 8 legs and a total of 80 questions were in front of us. We agreed on a strategy, work on 2 legs at a time independently, then gather and compare notes.
As in a TSD “trap” Rallye, the key here is to avoid the “traps” that were expertly laid by the authors (each leg has a different author). You can think of it as a coast-to-coast series of puzzles. We THINK we outsmarted them, but we won’t know until the results are in!
Over the next month or so, we met several times to hash out our differences. The answers will be submitted before March 8th, and we will wait for the results.
All in all, an enjoyable way to spend some time in January, and satisfy at least part of the “Rallye” bug.
I have scanned the 2021 Instruction Book and can provide a .pdf to anyone who would like to try the 2021 Massacre without actually entering!
