[Rehaan]

Heres a slightly incomplete Team-BHP Group pic.



Rehaan, F50, Manson, Cyrus, Swale84, ?sorry?, Arpandiv, Michael_schume, Dippy, FlyingSpur, Leadfoot, GTO, R.P.M, Tejas@perioimpl, Straight6 .... damn im getting good with names!
Missing : Ford_rocam, vikram18, Heman

And just before dropping a few of the navigators off at Mahalaxmi station after the event, i decided to make them do a demo of reading the navigation sheet - for the benefit of all the Team-BHP readers. Here it is :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDWXfa1OL9M

In the video Pankaj (Tejas's nav in the passenger seat), Chandrakant (my nav, behind Pankaj), Heman's nav in the middle, and another lady (im not sure if she was a nav?) behind the drivers seat.


FYI - The first line he reads is just the heading. After that.
[Instruction number eg. 40] [Cumulative kms eg.14.63] [Split kms eg. 00.13] [Instruction on what to when you reach this point]


cya
R

PS - Will post the prize distribution pics as well as the result sheet when flyingspur and others are done posting their pictorials!

[frankmehta]

absolutely feel like the entire event went past my eyes. one of the best coverage i have seen of ANY event. team bhp at its best. cheers guys, and kudos for the good cause.

[speedzak]

Wow! Amazing.
Nice to see so much enthusiasm and talent.

Way to go Bhpians! Keep the revvs high.

[Stratos]

Great report and pictures. I wish I was present. But, if the rally is in December of 2009, I will be there for sure to participate

[mmmjgm]

Scooby sir, very good set of wheels,

Great deed of all who participated, heartwarming to see a great turnout.

Someone should have won something.
Great job tbhp.

cheers
M M

[leadf00t]

yesterday's rally get a mention in the TOI

Unique car rally for visually challenged-Mumbai-Cities-The Times of India

unfortunately no pics.

[R.P.M]

Had a great time yesterday. Really enjoyed meeting fellow BHPians, hopefully next time's turnout will be much better. More events like this need to be organised, nothing like a nice sunday morning drive for a good cause.

[F50]

Sunday well spent! Charity & Chaos but classic.
Blind Man Rally was absolute fun and I was wondering why didnt I participate in previous years.

On Saturday, we met at NAB for a brief briefing. We got our respective numbers, I tried for 14 but was already taken so took number 27! Few minutes later we were paired with our navigators! My navigator was Pandit who participated in the rally for the first time, just like me.

As GTO said, he didnt understand the navigator initially and ended up having Energee at Aarey and back, I took my navigator for a spin till Worli Naka and back. On the way gave a demo of my ICE. He loved the ICE as well as the AC!! lol
I came to know that we both (GTO & me) got it wrong (dummy run) because we both came in from the wrong direction. In next 10 mins I asked him to read the whole braille again and visualized the dummy run as I was familiar with Worli roads and by-lanes.

Come Sunday, got up bit late as mentioned by Flyingspur! Nice report and pics, btw.


Here is the DDiS




The stage is set or is it still setting?



Few Bhpians car:
Rehaan's Fiesta



Jitu' monster and Tejas' OHC



After not finding any parking space, Vikram decides to park right on the road! lol




There was an Article 9 on Advertising in the Rule book. Competitors are allowed to carry ads which are authorised by N.Laws and FMSCI. No offensive ads and no political or religious either. This guy took it seriously and did it inch perfect.



These are special bunch of Bhpians! Its flag off time and still no signs of their navigators!!



I made a mistake right at the beginning, instead of taking right fork for Breach Candy I went straight and realized when I reached Marine Drive. The route was easy and not at all confusing unless you dont know any Mumbai roads.

Overall great fun! I would love to do this every year!

Few of the moments/quotes from the rally.

1) Last year Cyrus finished the rally before the last few cars were flagged off. He helped to flag off the remaining cars. (learned this year)

2) Arpandiv taking detours to Opera House and Kurla Chor Bazaar for new tail-lamps and bumper.

3) Manson asking for kit-kats and Parle Gs on junction.

4) GTO, on Sunday morning, asking his navigator, "Tu sab seekh ke aaya hai na?"

5) Manson's Scorpio turns into a shuttle! Straight 6 got scared when 5 people opened the scorpio's door and barged into it.

Many more but i dont remember!

[Rehaan]

After the rally and a delicious lunch (courtesy bluesea) - there were a few quick speeches followed by a prize distribution ceremony.





These guys were the first runners up



The overall winners, with only 17 negative points!!



Winners of the "ladies class", (since sam couldn't make it this time.)



Unfortunately no Team-BHPians made it on the podium this time, but here are the results with TBHPians highlighted :



And here is the participation certificate that Dippy has mentioned earlier.



Thats all from me.
Many thanks to the organizers and everyone else involved.

Hope to see a whole lot more Team-BHPians at the next Blind Man Rally - confirmed for 7th Feb 2010!!

cya
R

[GTO]

We had a blast yesterday! The only factor that got me out of bed, so early on a sunday morning, was the thought of meeting so many BHPians and driving for a humane cause. What better way to bring in Team-BHPs 5th birthday I say! Special gesture by Rtechs entire family for their presence at the time of flagoff.

I was originally scheduled to participate in the Jeep; in fact, that’s the car I got to Saturdays pre-event briefing as well. However, the organizers informed me that a trip-meter is absolutely essential to the drive. Hell, even the speedo in my Jeep doesn’t work! Thus, I switched over to the Vtec on Sunday morning.

Interacting with my navigators (two of them ) was an eye-opener. When you spend time with someone who doesn’t even have mere eyesight – something basic which each one of us takes for granted – but an overwhelmingly strong spirit was a motivator. It was Gods way of telling us "Look boys, you don't have a reason to complain in life. Give to others". My primary navigator Gopinath was a rockstar! He’s been in Mumbai for about 6 months and is currently learning the English language & basic computer operations. The second navigator – Rajesh – ended up in my car totally by chance! When Gopinath & I walked up to my car for the flagoff, we were surprised to see Rajesh waiting by (he’s in the first pic of my Vtec). Apparently, he was navigating someone else on Saturday, but that dude didn’t show up / some other reason. He was pretty disappointed when he heard that that another navigator was already allocated to my car. Obviously, he was looking forward to the drive. I took a spur of the moment decision and asked him to join me anyways. The organizers were supportive as well; I simply told them “The man is here to navigate. Just let him do the damn navigation”. Rajesh is learning basic computer skills in addition to acupressure massage therapies.

They had a wicked sense of humour and had me in splits all along the drive. High pressure moments : both of them arguing on the correct route (once when they both were wrong). We got flagged off at about 0920 - 0930 hours, since our car number was 54 and it took about a minute for each car (flagoff started at 0830). In the next two hours, we crossed by all checkposts, despite getting lost twice. Once at the Tardeo junction, second in the Bandra Kurla complex. Save for that, we had a pretty smooth running. Ankit tells me I got a lot of penalties for reaching the TCs early , Hell, atleast my navigators got the high-revving experience. Guess what? Gopinath & Rajesh commented on how much they liked the engine / exhaust sound. And for the most part, we were cruising around with Dads’ old hindi songs for company (no hip-hop yesterday!).

The Blind Man Car Rally raised about 15,00,000 rupees; Translated, each one of our entries was responsible for about Rs. 25,000 in contribution! THANKS to all the BHPians who made it this weekend. I’m sure the Team-BHP entry list would have been longer if it weren’t for the event having a last minute rescheduling from the 8th to the 15th.

I gotta admit, Team-BHP's cars were immaculately maintained. The entire lineup....right from Dippys spic & span OHC to R.P.M.s 6 year old immaculate Mondeo to Vikrams great looking Civic….the cars looked great with their Team-BHP stickers showing off proud. I like how F50 has done up his Swift, a simple white with tints + alloys, and a subtle Team-BHP sticker job.

I hope that the next rally isn’t in mid-December, I am scheduled to be in the States from the 6th to the 20th.

[Ardy]

This is really amazing and a great cause.

Other cities should also hold such rallies.

[ankitpp]

Dear BHPians,
As the main organiser to the event, I would like to thank all of you for coming to the event and making it such a huge sucess. The BMR is an annual fund raiser for our organisation. Please do put in your comments on things that you think we need to improve upon. Hope you all had a great time this year. The rally for the next year is scheduled for the 13th Dec 2009. See you all then.
Thanking You once again.

Ankit Parekh
Convenor BMR
Bombay Round Table no 2.

[iraghava]

WOW! Looks like you guys had a real ball! Nice event!

Originally Posted by Dippy

one mentally retarded co navigator(guess who?)

Cyrus??

[GTO]

Originally Posted by Ardy

Other cities should also hold such rallies.

They actually do, Ardy! Ahmedabad, Surat & Chennai are up next.

Originally Posted by ankitpp

Please do put in your comments on things that you think we need to improve upon.

Ankit, as I posted in the other thread, a 60 minute training session for the navigators ought to be made mandatory. Will go a long way in making the BMR an even bigger success. My navigator didn't have a clue of the event, drive, his responsibilities or the purpose. He was merely asked to report at the NAB at 1600 hours by someone in his computer class.

[Tejas@perioimpl]

Originally Posted by ankitpp

Dear BHPians,
As the main organiser to the event, I would like to thank all of you for coming to the event and making it such a huge sucess. The BMR is an annual fund raiser for our organisation. Please do put in your comments on things that you think we need to improve upon. Hope you all had a great time this year. The rally for the next year is scheduled for the 13th Dec 2009. See you all then.
Thanking You once again.

Ankit Parekh
Convenor BMR
Bombay Round Table no 2.

Ankit, it's been a pleasure participating in the event and you guys did a fabulous job organizing the whole thing. Congratulations, you guys pulled it off without a hitch!
Can you post pics that you guys have? We all would love to have pics of our cars being flagged off... You don't need to put all 80 odd car pics, just the team bhp ones...