2019 Moss Motoring Challenge
Pictures of me or Donna, the Miata and the Challenge poster in front of various places, landmarks or signs to score points and hopefully win fabulous prizes.
Pictures of me or Donna, the Miata and the Challenge poster in front of various places, landmarks or signs to score points and hopefully win fabulous prizes.
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.
We have finished up our fifth year of doing the Moss Motoring Challenge amassing 265 points out of the 288 possible. I’m fairly sure that that total will land us in the 50 Runners-Up category where we have been 3 of the previous 4 years. The first couple of years we use to send in a CD with all of the pictures and I’d add a little Read Me First file with some notes on some of the challenge adventures on it. Now that we just post the photos online, I guess I’ll have to create a blog post…
Favorite Photo
Favorite Point Story
Least Favorite Point
Easiest Point
Hardest Point
Regrets
Are the ones we didn’t get, including the two Moss Warehouses. We are 400 miles away from the east coast one in Virginia, but we never had any reason to get anywhere close to that far north. We were 500 miles from the west coast warehouse on our our already 5 week week trip to Lake Tahoe, but that would have added at least an additional week of driving.
On the way home from Hendersonville, North Carolina on Friday after we had spent Thanksgiving with my sister and her husband, we detoured through Spartanburg, SC to check on a skating rink that hosts roller derby. Sure enough, there was a sign out front of Skate Palace advertising a match from back in October. Unfortunately we were in the Mini not the Miata, so we vowed to drive the 100 miles one-way back there the following day. But Saturday was a cold, miserable, and rainy. Not a nice day for a drive, even with the top up.
We waited until today to make the trip. When we got there, the two people you see on the left were changing the sign to read Craft Fair Today (see the ladder…) and fortunately for us they had finished only one side. The other side still had the roller derby announcement on it. Pheew!
One of the motoring challenges this year is Wild Animal Statue or Sculpture (life-size or larger) and we were going to use one of the fiberglass art horses still scattered around town, but after some discussion we thought that maybe they didn’t fit the wild part, so we have been keeping our eyes open for other possibilities. Three weeks ago when we did our three city deli bagel taste test drive on our way back from North Carolina on US176 South, somewhere we zipped by a large metal sculpture of a moose. We both noticed it, but didn’t stop because we were over carbo-loaded and just wanted to go home.
This past Saturday we decided to take a road trip back up to Greenville to go to Greenfield’s Deli to get some more of our favorite bagels. And seeing as we were nearby, we decided to go and find that moose statue. The both of us could see the statue in our minds eye and knew it was somewhere along US176 between Landrum,SC and Flat Rock, NC. Not that I minded the extra 80 or so miles of driving because fully half of it would be on windy two-lane US176 up and down the mountain between those two towns. We were relatively sure it was just outside either Tryon, NC or Saluda, NC, but as it turned out it was nowhere near them, it was nowhere we could find along that route.
So either we both had the same visual hallucination or it was a real moose grazing in the grass as it migrated back to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Near Mile Marker 7 on I-20 West heading towards Augusta, Georgia, the CTBNL crossed over the sixty-six thousand mile plateau. We were headed over to the Red Wing Rollerway to try one more time for the elusive Roller Derby Rink photo in the Moss Motoring Challenge. The Augusta Soul City Sirens were going to be holding a try out/boot camp session on both Monday and Tuesday nights. Just like in January, we were foiled again by the lack of any outdoor signage. What is the definition of insanity?
Because it is so hot in the middle of the day we have just been picking away slowly at the motoring challenges. Since we have last spoke on the matter, a month and a half ago, we have captured a marginal Carpentry Shop, a questionable Horse Drawn Carriage, our last Historic Landmark, a Share The Road sign, Lightning, a Mail Carrier, a Scene You Can Smell, the I go Here All The Time, the Disc Golf Course with Players and then a better Disk Golf Course with Players for a total of 17 points.
One of the challenges for this year’s Moss Motoring Challenge was “Monster Truck.” We had a bead on a place in Chesterfield, SC that is called Monster Truck Ranch that gives rides in one. I have the address saved, figuring we would drive up and see if they’d let us take a photo, but we have never made the effort to take the 2-1/2 hour one-way drive up.
Last Friday Donna found an event that included Monster Trucks at a drag strip outside Orangeburg (about 50 miles away) that was for Friday and Saturday. We decided to go on Friday early and hopefully beat the crowds. We packed a lunch and figured we pay the $25 entry fee and see if we could get close to a Big ‘Ol Scary Truck and maybe watch some dragsters. Online it said it started at 9:30 and we timed our arrival perfectly. Except the gates weren’t open! All that was in line was one car, a motor home and the port-a-potty suction truck. There seemed to be no activity at all and after a few minutes we just turned around and came home.
On the way back on the outskirts of the thriving metropolis of Kitching Mill, SC the CTBNL blinked by 65,000 miles on the odometer.
On Saturday afternoon we were bored, so we took another drive to Orangeburg. Turns out there was another option to possibly get a picture of a Monster Truck in the very same town. This was a make-up event from a rained out May Spring National Monster Truck Showdown and was at the Orangeburg County Fairgrounds.
On our way to that show we passed right by the drag strip where the other event was, so we popped in to see if we could see anything from outside. Bingo, the results are above.
Even though we now had a picture for the challenge we opted to drive the extra 10 miles over to the fairgrounds. First we cheated a bit and followed a road that took us around the back of the fairgrounds to see if we could get a better “over the fence” picture than the one we already had. No dice there, so we drove around to main entrance to see we could get a decent view that way. Nope again. So we came on back to Aiken.
6 hours + 250 miles = 3 points.