Hot Dog!

In this year’s Motoring Challenge the two big point earners, worth nine each, are the Wienermobile and a Blimp.

Getting a handle on the Wienermobile location is supposed to be easy, just download the app and you can find out where any of the 6 vehicles will be on a given day. There were early rumbling on the Moss Motoring group Facebook page that the app was way wrong and a couple of folks showed up only to not see a Wienermobile. Didn’t matter to me because when I first tried to load the app on my phone, the Google Play store wouldn’t let me, it told me my device was incompatible.

I heard Twitter was supposed to be the way to go while they fixed the app, but the information I found was somewhat incomplete. It gave a date and city, but not an actual location. And it only went out so far and then when that date passed, it never posted another schedule. I tried to create a Google news feed that tracked mention of the Wienermobile, but that usually resulted in getting a story once it had been and gone somewhere.

Guessing it was going to be in Atlanta on Superbowl Weekend, I checked the Atlanta paper online and found out it actually would be there and it listed specific locations. So we made plans to drive over and back the Saturday before, but in end the weather was supposed to be rainy and we hate driving in Atlanta, so we didn’t go. There is one of the Wienermobiles assigned to the southeast region, so we knew we would find it someplace eventually.

Last week I learned that the app was supposedly fixed. I tried again to load it my phone, but it still wouldn’t. So I found a place I could download the APK file and side-loaded it to the phone. Lookie there, the Wienermobile was going to be in Atlanta again this weekend. This time it was going to be in the eastern suburbs, so we wouldn’t have to venture inside the I-285 beltway, AKA The Danger Zone. On Sunday it was going to be at two different Walmarts in Lithonia.

We still had enough points left for one more free room at a Holiday Inn Express, so on Saturday afternoon we tossed a change of clothes in a bag and drove over to a town one further west of where we needed to be on Sunday morning. In the morning when I looked in on Twitter to see if anyone had posted pictures from the event the day before, I was shocked to see that a Wienermobile was at the Daytona 500 in Florida. Knowing they were assigned to regions and the flaky app postings, I wasn’t real confident that our goal would not be waiting for us in the Lithonia Walmart parking lot.

As you can see above, there was a Wienermobile where the app said it would be. Turns out the southeast region Wienermobile was in Daytona, but this one was from the midwest region. I didn’t think to ask them why they were down south. Donna and I chatted with the two “Hotdoggers” for a bit and I think they were happy for the company because at nine o’clock on a chilly, misty Sunday morning there weren’t a lot of visitors. By 9:30 we were back on I-20 heading home nine points richer.

One down and one to go. Now, where is that confounded blimp?

12 Rules For Miata Life

A few days ago I blogged about the “12 Rules” phenomena and I mentioned I thought it would take a while to think about the subject before I could create my own set. So, off an on since then, I have been plugging away at doing just that with a little Miata spin. I had a good start, Rule #1, but then it all fell apart. It ended up more like 12 reasons to buy a Miata, so anyway…

  1. It’s a Convertible – Put the top down as often as possible.
  2. It’s Inexpensive – Until you start adding options, every new Miata is priced below the $34,000 average cost of a vehicle in 2019. Nice 5-7 year old ones can be had for $15-20k. Of course there are cheaper cars to be had, but nothing can touch it on a cost per mile of fun.
  3. It’s Reliable – Well taken car of early models are still going strong at over a quarter of a million miles. And not so well taken care of examples can easily be brought to life without breaking your bank.
  4. It’s a Sports Car – On any giving weekend at SCCA, NASA and autocross events there will more Miatas than practically every other make of car. Even if you just drive on the street, do not buy cheap tires, they limit the fun available.
  5. It’s a Slow Car – And it is leaps and bounds more fun to drive a slow car fast than it is to drive a fast car slow.
  6. It’s a Small Car – Always park at the end of a row so at least one side will be free of large vehicles to make it easier to back out.
  7. It’s a Great First Car – The open cockpit will make your teen driver feel vulnerable, so they will be paying attention to trying not to get crushed by the typically much larger vehicles around them, plus it is small, light-weight and maneuverable making it easy avoid them. As a bonus it is a two-seater thereby reducing the peer pressure to do something stupid by 66% as compared to the typical sedan.
  8. It’s as Good as a Pickup Truck – On a sunny day. With the top down it is amazing what can be carried in the passenger seat sticking up and/or back.
  9. It’s More Fun with Friends – So join a local Miata Club, they’re everywhere.
  10. It’s Infinitely Customizable – While some consider them perfect right out of the box, there is an aftermarket for these things that is staggering, from every possible performance modification you could think of to all manner of cosmetic stuff to nice things that Mazda probably should have put on one to begin with.
  11. It’s Photogenic – Like babies and pets. See above. 😉
  12. It’s not a Collector’s Car – So drive it..

One of 71,000 Missing Memories

Some where in the last week or so the CTBNL passed the 71,000 mile mark and I didn’t notice. I’m guessing it was on the 1st when we took a drive over to Augusta and took some Motoring Challenge photos. But then you think I would have noticed it, no I don’t think it was then. Matter of fact, I have a hazy memory of thinking that we needed just 22 miles to get to that mark when we returned that day. It probably happened on a small trip around town and I meant to blog about it and forgot. Until now.

Portmanteau

This year’s Moss Motoring Challenge has a very clever and sometimes hard to capture category called “Writer’s Road Block (signs or scenes)”
Action verb – 1 pt
Alliteration – 1 pt
Anagram – 4 pts
Assonance – 3 pts
Conflict – 2 pts
Foreshadowing – 5 pts
Malapropism – 4 pts
Metaphor – 1 pt
Needs Editing – 3 pts
Oxymoron – 3 pts
Portmanteau – 3 pts
Simile – 1 pt

The above is a portmanteau: word that is a linguistic blend of words, in which parts of multiple words or their phones (sounds) are combined into a new word, as in smog, coined by blending smoke and fog, or motel, from motor and hotel.

Georgialina = Georgia + Carolina

Truck Day

Pitchers and catchers report in just 9 days…

12 Rules

The other day on my morning walk, I listened to an episode of the podcast Revisionist History entitled “Malcolm Gladwell’s 12 Rules for Life“. He was reacting to a whole 12 Rules meme that was generated by a book called, surprisingly, “12 Rules for Life” that came out last January. He had an interesting take on the idea and in typical Canadian fashion it ended up being mostly about hockey.

In typical Life of Brian fashion I knew nothing about this meme until after it had been around so long it was already out of fashion so, you just know I’m going to make my own anyway. Trouble with that is, there is no way I can come up with 12 rules without doing a whole lot of cognitating first, so I’m going to take a play from Mr. Gladwell and name only one. His rule is: Pull the Goalie (it has to do with Risk vs, Reward and is worth a listen.)

Here’s mine: Life is too short to drive boring cars.

Brushed Stainless Steel Dash

Stainless Steel Gauge Surround

On the 25th of January, they announced the winners of the 2018 Moss Motoring Challenge and mailed off the $50 Gift Certificates. As expected, we landed in among the top 50 runners-up at the totally respectable level of tied for 8th. Our Gift Certificate arrived on Monday the 28th, on Tuesday I ordered the goodie you see above and it arrived today. A couple hours later and it was in.

We took advantage of mild weather this afternoon and took a drive to do a little work towards another $50 Gift Certificate next year. We snagged 3 photos to go along with the 2 we already have giving us a total of 15 points out of a possible 298.