Some of you know that myself(aka JoMo) and Dave(aka Nigel Prodrive) are at Rallye Defi in Quebec this weekend.

What some of you don't know is that we're here alone. Sure, there are plenty of other competitors and friends here, but we're crew-less. Now, a lot of teams don't have any crew, but LDR has a strong(and consistant crew).

Nothing has happened to our crew-most are quite fine. Problem is, none of them have passports. Lest you think it's because there are legal issues preventing them from attaining such documentation, I assure there aren't(at least none they've shared with me).

We haven't raced in Canada in two years and none of our crew was with us then(except for Duncan). We love racing in Canada, but have focused on the Rally America Eastern Regional Championship. We've missed Canadian Rally and wanted to come back. Rallye Defi seemed like the best event to come back to.

But what about the team!? After an extremely long day of recce(all recce days are long-don't mind my whining), Dave and I reflected on what it's like to be here without our crew.

Like any meaningful relationship, we miss them when they're not here. We miss the things they do for us and miss the comradery. We miss the way that we all seem to revert to early adolescence when we're on the road and on event together.

What we didn't realize is how meaningful that relationship is to us and our rally experience. We race for our team. They help engineer and build the car. They devote untold hours of their spare time to the team(at the expense of income and perhaps relationships). They want us to go big, or not go at all.

Most of all, they're our best friends. The time we spend in the barn/shop is perhaps more important that any of us realizes. It's our place/time to be creative, problem solve and provide amateur psychotherapy to each other(scary, I know!). It's our clubhouse. The team is essentially our gang. Sounds like we should write a sociology paper or something, doesnt it!? ;-)

Bottom line, Nigel and JoMo are piloting a fire breathing dragon this weekend sans LDR crew support. We'll have some folks on site volunteer some help, no doubt, but it won't be the same. We have to depend on each other and do all the things that the crew does for us. If the crew could've seen us today looking for stuff in the service truck, they would've told us to get out of, "their," truck and do what we do best-race a rally car.

Bottom line, we're not racing for ourselves this weekend, we're racing for our crew: Bronson, Duncan, DrewG, DrewS, Zach and NathanH. You guys are desperately missed and we'll do our best to make your armchair rally experience exciting this weekend!

Now, get those damn passport applications mailed in, will you!? We've got some more rallying to do yet! :-)