This weekend we volunteered as officials at a World Rally Championship in Coffs Harbour, NSW. Usually rally is a fun event, full of dirt (or snow), fast cars, and interesting people. I've met some of the most kind people and made some wonderful friendships, and have truly felt appreciated as a volunteer. Unfortunately, this was not my experience this time round. The rally itself is world class and extremely well run, the people, however, were dicks. When the rally started, we were buzzing with excitement and assured my friend Emma (a rally first timer) that she would have a great time as it was her birthday weekend....buuut we were wrong.
3:50am Saturday - Our alarm goes off. Time to get ready to head to stage. We were posted as spectator crossing marshalls on a hairpin inside corner - which is pretty rad. We would never get that close in Canada. We were literally within an arms length. The cars we incredible and it was some of the craziest rally I'd seen. A driver by the name of Hayden Paddon from New Zealand caught my eye - he was fast, accurate and drove a pretty awesome car. I screamed loud and tried to get as many pics and videos as I could for this blog. After lunch I was posted up stage on 'the horn' to signal down to officials when I car was coming so they could close the crossing to spectators. That was awesome. The cars were literally hauling ass at 170km/hr a few feet away from me.
When I got back to the spectator area, Tracie had just realized that after 10 hours of volunteering, her new DC jacket, water bottle and phone had been stolen....who steals a water bottle? I mean, really??
Well shit.
6:00 Sunday - We head out to stage to do marshalling at a busy parking lot by the most popular stage. The State Emergency Services (SES) are in charge of directing traffic and parking cars efficiently. They quickly got overwhelmed so I jumped in. I directed 2WD one way and 4WD in another towards the more treacherous terraine to make the most of our space. Between 3 of us we parked 900 cars in a 400 car area and when the police showed up to bitch they were quite impressed with the planning and left without complaints. Most people were pleasant and thanked me for volunteering but when we had to close the road due to it being full, people turned - pissed that they had to walk in. It was a long ass walk, but that's what you get for coming last minute. People were calling us 'jokes' and getting in our faces saying it was bullshit...not my fault that people got there before them...
So once we dealt with that rodeo, we had to deal with all the traffic walking up from the road trying to congregate in areas not designed for spectating because it was too dangerous (which you know must have been actually really dangerous considering what they do allow). We were told that people were strictly not allowed to stand on the outside corner of a pretty serious corner as a) cars could roll into the crowd and b) big rocks were being kicked up like crazy. Last year cars parked there had giant dings and everyone had broken windows. <Enter Hayden Paddons crew> 3 bus loads of assholes role in and refused to park where directed, or listen to any official or security guards. We repeatedly asked them not to stand in dangerous spots and to carry on to the designated viewing area. They seemed to think that they were entitled to different rules than everybody else and completely disregarded our requests, even standing trackside with small children. They were so rude and kept saying really snide comments to the volunteers - even though we were only doing what we were asked. It was so bad that police had to get involved. I was really disappointed to be treated so poorly when I'm giving up my time for free to benefit the rally community....What they are too stupid to realize or are to ignorant care, is that without the volunteers, there would likely be no rally. There were 1000 people volunteering their time in the heat and rain to make this event happen, and I was totally blown away by how shitty #haydenpaddons friends and family treated us. I really thought kiwis were nice but they were ignorant pricks. I hear Haydon is a nice guy, but I went from cheering for him to totally disliking him. His family - his dad especially, did that. I did have to laugh though. After all that, he had a pretty shit performance. 7th this weekend, 17th overall. I was actually making some fun of it to Tracie saying that after they were such dicks, it was satisfying to see him tank <sarcastically saying> "Good job on 7th, you must feel so proud!!!" Then I saw the look on her face and realized that the ringleader of the douche canoes was right behind me and heard it. Ha! You could tell he felt a bit dumb. A couple minutes later he walked passed again, and said "good job on being oh so helpful today!" Then shouldered me as he went by. I'm not exactly a waif, but he's a full grown man, getting physical with a female volunteer. What an ass hat!
When we finally get back to camp, Trav lifts his shirt and I notice this thing on his back that looks like a mole with hair growing out of it...I know he doesng have said mole, and I was totally grossed out to realize its a fricken tick borrowed in his skin. Before I can fel him, he reaches back and scrapes it off. Luckily it comes out in one piece, with it's full head and all three mouth barbs. We asked google about it and apparently Coffs Harbour is listed as the worst place for ticks In Australia - many of which carry limes disease or paralysis. We found his tick and put it in a ziplock bag, but from the looks of it it's a Brown Dog tick which rarely cause disease in humans - let alone gingers.
All in all it was a pretty big bust. Long story short, I'll never volunteer for Australian Rally again. I'm glad I got to volunteer for a WRC event but volunteering wasn't worth it. Canadian events are wayyyyy better. And I made me miss Dix and Billy big time.
As a side note, the one person I do need to shout to was our volunteer team leader Graham. He was beyond nice. He invited us to his hotel so all 5 of us could shower lol.
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