Packing up the car and driving to Calgary, AB from Kamloops BC, starting at 11:55pm on Wednesday night, to arrive early in Calgary for some vital camera store shopping and test day coverage, seemed like a good idea at the time.

However, quickly into the execution of our admittedly very little thought out plan, we realized it was a relatively terrible idea (as far as terrible ideas go). Arriving in Calgary at 7:30am the WRS media team ransacked a camera store for some vital shopping (the term ransack is used loosely, as it turns out we were the ones that had all our money taken!), and made our way out to the Forest Loop test stage for the 1pm launch by the NOS energy drink sponsored Andrew Comrie-Picard. We waited for around 2-3 hours before the Evo came roaring by, and after more than a few hours of shooting footage and testing camera gear, we realized, in our excitement, that we had gotten a ride with fellow rally enthusiast Jim Bowie deep into the stage and my trusty VW Golf was now 4+km back in the other direction. Hitching up our camera gear we trudged our way back to the car, luckily meeting up with flatovercrest.com photographer Warwick Patterson, who gave us a ride for the last 1km in his not-so-trusty-and-semi-terrifying rental car.

So far so good, one seemingly great idea turned into sleep deprivation – one incredibly dusty hike – and one ride in a wavy rental car. Well, maybe not so far so good then, but so far so fairly typical day in the life of rally media coverage.

After spending some time south of the border for two rounds of the RA Championship, it was nice to see the familiar faces of the CRC regulars, ralliers, organizers and volunteers gearing up for round 2 of the CRC after the long wait from Rallye Perce-Neige Maniwaki.

Check out the Test day Gallery!