Ian and Lorrie Holmes have only been road rallying for eighteen months. They have been members of the Sports Car Club of America for an even shorter time - less than a year. Yet this husband and wife organizing team have already put on two road rallies sanctioned by the SCCA Land 'o Lakes Region! In fact, their Rum Runner Series of rallies out of Princeton, Minnesota, are quickly garnering a reputation as enjoyable, beginner-centric events that can even present a challenge to the seasoned veterans in the area.

On February 15, 10 cars set out from the local Coffee Corner coffee shop, on Rum River Drive, in Princeton, on the first "Iced" Rum Runner. The 150-mile route took the entrants down to Becker, Minnesota, before returning to Princeton and looping around the Rum River State Forest, to a finish at the appropriately named Finish Line Cafe in Princeton.

As befits a winter road rally, snow was lightly falling during the first section of the event. The snowfall never got bad enough to cause anyone any problems, although later in the event the sweep vehicle was needed to pull one competitor out of a snow bank. A big thank you must go out the sweep vehicle run by Gabe Johnson and Leann Frydrych who even played good Samaritan to a member of the public they saw in a ditch.

Winners in Class E were Clarence and Kate Westberg who posted the only perfect score for the rally. In this case, "E" stood for experience as the three E-Class cars could muster 100 years of rally experience among them.

The most popular class was Class N, the Novices. Here the winners were Kristen and Shawn Niehaus, with eight points.

All entrants were very happy at the end of the event, all saying they would. A big thanks goes out to Jim and Kathy Jurgenson who came all the way from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to participate. Hopefully, a good report is going back to the road rally community in Milwaukee.

A successful road rally is only as good as the crew that works it. Checkpoints were worked by Lorrie Holmes, Dave Fuss, Kerry Freund and Randy Hoffa. Rallymaster Ian is sufficiently buoyed by the success of the event that planning has already started for the fall version of the Rum Runner.