Rally ‘Round the Valley, Boys, Without a Thomas Guide

Welcome to “Santa’s Revenge,” said the information sheet distributed to a crowd huddled at a rain-swept Van Nuys parking lot.

Despite the title, this was not the setting for a slasher film in which Santa goes mad, has Rudolph stuffed and made into a night light. Rather, it was the backdrop for a bizarre car rally that asked contestants to participate in a group fantasy; not only did they have to believe in Mr. Claus for one stormy night, they had to imagine riding in his sleigh as he tried to find his way around the Valley without a Thomas Guide.

You might call it the four-cylinder version of “Dungeons and Dragons.”

I wanted to attend a car rally because I considered it to be the definitive Southern California cultural experience. Oh sure, they hold rallies in other places. But nowhere do they have the spiritual resonance of the land of drive-ins and drive-bys, where the automobile has long been regarded not as mere transportation but as an object of adoration and worship. In this church of the four-speed-dual-quad-positraction car, the pews are tuck-and-roll, the choir sings “tach it up, tach it up, buddy gonna shut you down.”

I was unprepared for the way rallies had changed since my last experience in the ‘60s, when gas was cheap, highways were wide and the air was filled with intoxicating lead fumes that smoothed out unsightly wrinkles in the brain. As opposed to old-style, time-speed-distance affair, this gimmick rally required participants to decipher a confusing series of map instructions to arrive at a destination.

It is the theme, or story, that gives this competition its own wacky kind of logic. For a Halloween rally, for instance, competitors had been instructed to respect the dead, so anyone who drove on Graves Street lost points. Other themes have included “Outer Limits,” based on the old television series, and “Car Trek.”

If you detect a whiff of the Rubik’s Cube fanatic in these concepts, you’re on the right track. One longtime rallyist describes typical participants as “middle-aged, mainly nerds.”

Rallyists readily acknowledge that some people would rather hunt for hairballs in a shag carpet than drive around the city trying to figure out purposely confusing clues. But rally enthusiasts really get into the spirit, wearing pointed ears for “Car Trek” and donning the ceremonial 6-foot turkey suit for a Thanksgiving event called “Cold Turkey.”

“Many people met their spouses on rallies,” said rally organizer Rick Hillman, who met his wife six years ago when her car broke down while she was trying to navigate an earlier version of “Santa’s Revenge.” A plump, 38-year-old businessman from Canyon Country, Hillman is nicknamed the Evil Elf for his habit of designing fiendish tricks into his rallies.

David Kitchen, a 44-year-old systems analyst, had driven from Las Vegas to match wits with Hillman. “They don’t have this in Nevada,” he explained.

His partner was Janis Kontoff, 36, a legal secretary from Encino who enjoys “mind games.” After obtaining instructions and an answer sheet, they had barely traveled a block when Kitchen pulled to the curb to sort out his first crisis.

The instructions said to go right “at” a street called Romar, instead of “onto” Romar. It sounded like a meaningless distinction but Kitchen sensed treachery. They returned to the parking lot where he launched into a heated discussion with Hillman.

“Boy I’m good,” he exulted when he returned to the car, doing a little skip. He had caught the Evil Elf’s first trick, or trap, in rally vernacular.

As they headed back into the rainy night, Kitchen and Kontoff conversed in “rallyspeak,” a befuddling combination of shorthand English and traffic engineer jargon:

“Is this an RI?” asked Kontoff, referring to something called a route instruction. “Oh, this is the first OPP?” she added happily, meaning an opportunity to do something. “We’re still going to L,” Kitchen replied and turned left.

After a few more OPPs, Ls, and Rs wound them through residential neighborhoods, they drew up to a long line of cars at the first checkpoint, where participants receive updated instructions.

While residents nervously peeked out windows--rallyists occasionally must explain themselves to skeptical police--a woman named Mary went from car to car, asking participants to sing a song to the tune of “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town.”

Up and down the street, atonal singing echoed from car-based carolers:

We’re trying real hard,

Looking for traps,

Searching for roadways,

Scanning our maps,

Old St. Nick please give us some help!!

This may not be Irving Berlin material. Then again, he never had to put hidden traps in his lyrics. Because participants had been instructed to ignore signs with St. in them, singers were supposed to omit that word.

Kitchen and Kontoff spotted the trap immediately. Not like the time Kitchen was tricked into hopping out of the car and shooting hoops in a darkened park.

If Kitchen and Kontoff were seasoned pros, Hope Goldstein and her two friends were rally rookies. None was older than 21, and when Mary asked them to sing, they did not de-canonize St. Nick. As they pulled away from the curb, Goldstein, a student at UCLA, groaned: “I’m confused between a TEE, an OPP and a who-knows-what. I don’t want to learn a new language.”

She thought the whole thing was pretty silly anyway, maintaining that she had been browbeaten into participating by a friend, Kim Drucker. Drucker, 20 and a San Jose State student, had caught the fever after going on a few rallies. Ignoring Goldstein’s sarcasm, Drucker bent over her instruction sheet and, like President Bush in a supermarket checkout line, appeared studiously confused.

“There has to be a trap,” she fussed.

“Why,” asked Goldstein.

“Because there’s always a trap,” Drucker replied.

Rallyists had been told to write “Reindeer” on their answer sheets if there was no other acceptable answer to a question. Drucker’s sheet by now had more reindeer than Santa’s sleigh. Finally, after a good deal of wandering around, she pulled up to a new checkpoint.

“I’d like a Happy Meal,” Goldstein said.

Meanwhile, even Kitchen and Kontoff, the cool professionals, were worried. One OPP followed another--all too neatly.

“This is the worst part,” said Kontoff. “When you know you’ve done something wrong but you can’t figure out what it is.”

Finally, thoroughly unsatisfied, Kitchen and Kontoff drove to meet other competitors at a pizza shop, where Hillman would unravel the mystery.

“Great rally. It was awesome,” said a slender man with a clipboard, nodding smugly as Hillman explained the answers.

Despite their good start, the Kitchen-Kontoff team had been defeated by the Evil Elf. On this night, there would be no trophies.

They bickered gently over who messed up.

“This is the fun part,” said Kitchen, “blaming your partner.”