(Photos: Tedrick Mealy via OpenPaddock.net) Winter doesn’t mean that every form of motorsports shuts down and returns to the garage until spring. The off-roaders have been romping in the fall mud, the snow and ice freaks are out playing in the cold, and rally drivers…well, a good rally driver really doesn’t care what the weather or terrain is. All they are truly concerned with is making it from Point A to Point B as quick as possible, without breaking a ton of stuff on the car and without winding up in the trees. Unfortunately, most of the time the rally coverage that we tend to see is the European stuff that makes it onto YouTube or anything associated with the World Rally Championship and/or Ken Block. Nothing wrong with that, but there is so much more to the world of rally racing that doesn’t get shown and that’s a shame. I’ll even admit that for all of my interest in the sport, I’ve only attended two rallies (the 2010 Olympus Rally and the 2010 Oregon Trail Rally) ever in my life. Gotta work on that…

Meanwhile, Tedrick Mealy, a guy I know from the university I attended, has gotten deep into the rally world. He’s up in Washington State and recently got to cover the Northwest RallySprint, held at DirtFish Rally School in Snoqualmie, Washington on December 12th, 2015. If DirtFish sounds familiar, that’s the place where Roadkill’s General Mayhem Charger went from just another build to bona fide infamy, with Finnegan and Freiburger out-sliding the Dukes of Hazzard themselves in a Charger that had a failing transmission. The whole region is suited to having dirty fun in a car: gravel fire roads, wooded areas, and the wet weather that western Washington is famous for. Sure, there are plenty of Subarus, but there are other rides that would be a lot of fun, from a 1980s Dodge Colt we suspect has some Mitsubishi Evo parts under the skin, boxy Volvos to unleash your inner Swede, and how about someone bombing a Maverick around the course?! That’s bitchin’, no matter if you like rally or not…and speaking from personal experience, Mavericks and Comets make killer dirt cars with the right amount of power under the hood.

We want to extend a big thanks to Tedrick and Mike from OpenPaddock.net for these photos!