Motoring Challenge

Where’s That Confounded Blimp?

In this year’s Motoring Challenge the two big point earners, worth nine each, are the Wienermobile and a Blimp. We snagged the rolling hot dog back in February, so now we needed the blimp.

Turns out there are 3 active Goodyear Blimps, each with their own home base. The first is just where you’d expect it to be, Akron, Ohio, Home of the Goodyear Company. The other two are on opposite costs of the country, Carson, CA (AKA Los Angeles) and Pompano Beach, FL (AKA Miami.) Akron and Pompano are around 600 miles away, neither would be an attractive drive, and LA, forget about it. Our best bet would be to catch one in its travels.

Unlike the Wienermobile, there is no smart phone app to keep track of Goodyear’s 3 airships, but you can find out where they are going to be appearing right on its very own web page. And as it turns out Wing Foot 3 would be providing aerial coverage of the RBC Heritage Golf Tournament in Hilton Head Island, SC (a mere 130 miles away) on April 20 & 21.

We had a Miata Club event on Saturday, so we planned a day trip down to HHI on Sunday. Knowing they wouldn’t fly the blimp back to its home base for one night it would have to be parked at an airport overnight. But, which one? The small airport on the Island or the bigger one near Savannah, GA. A blimp would be too big to put in any old hanger, so it should be visible by driving by. We would leave early in the morning, take a picture and be back home by mid-afternoon.

Because HHI is sort of on the way to Savannah the plan was to check there first. Plus an early Sunday morning arrival on the Island would make the normally busy traffic somewhat lighter. We plugged the airport location into Google and made a bee-line there. The road leading to the terminal had several places where we could see onto the runway, but no blimp sightings. Pulled into the small parking lot out front and walked into the terminal. We could see through several of those windows onto the runway too, but no blimp. We cruised more of the roads surrounding the one runway getting a few more peeks, but never saw a blimp.

We did spot a vintage VW Beetle in a parking lot of a small business park near the airport. This fits one of the Motoring Challenges, My First Car, because Donna’s first car was a 1971 Super Beetle. After watching us park near his car in two different spots and taking pictures, the owner of the car came out and asked if we needed any help. After explaining what we were doing, I asked, “Have you seen the blimp?” He said it wasn’t at this airport, it was at Savannah International.

That airport is north and east of the city of Savannah and it is easily accessible from Hilton Head in about an hour. The longer, but only slightly quicker way is US-278 to I-95, yuck, so we took the shorter route along scenic coastal back roads that took 5 minutes longer. We circled the perimeter roads around the airport, including a dead end road that led to the Gulfstrean factory where we passed a couple of private jets having their jet engines tested. No blimp. I then circled back and drove near the terminal to see if we could get a view on that end of the airport. As I slowed at a crosswalk near the departure gates there were a couple of women in yellow vests that read SECURITY. I asked them had the seen the blimp. Both responded with, “What blimp?”

It was now nearing noon and by now we should have been heading home. CBS’s coverage of the final round of the tournament wasn’t supposed to start until 3:00 PM. I suggested we head out to I-95 and find a lunch place before starting back to Aiken. Donna countered with, we should drive back to Hilton Head and get lunch there, kill some time shopping and then hunt the blimp in the air. So we re-traced our back road route the HHI.

On our way back through Bluffton, SC we stopped into a little restaurant that we ate at about 28 years ago called Squat ‘N’ Gobble. Probably the only thing different since that last time were the waitresses. Donna had Crabby Benedict and I got a Western Omelet. We did try and eat here a few years back, but it is so popular there was a 30 minute wait (and we don’t wait.)

Our big problem in capturing the airborne blimp would be we couldn’t get close to it. The golf course they were using is in Sea Pines Plantation that takes up the whole end of the island. It is a gated community and any old Joe can’t just drive in. Normally you can buy a day pass for $5 to go to the shops and restaurants in the Harbour Town area, but not during tournament time. Even spectators with tickets had to park on the other end of the island and get bused into the plantation.

When we got back on the Island we took the Cross Island Parkway, which is a toll road that by-passes the congested US-278 to go from one side of the island to the other, because there is an elevated bridge on the end closest to plantation and we figured it would give us a nice view of the sky. It did but there wasn’t a blimp in sight. We still had an hour and a half before the TV coverage was to begin, so we parked and wandered the shops of Coligny Plaza, had some ice cream, decided to toss in the towel and head home.

We decided to drive back across the Cross Island Parkway to get another skyward peek. When I rolled to a stop to pay the toll I asked the women inside if she had seen the blimp. “I can’t see nothing in here,” came the reply. we half repeated the trip to Savannah in hopes that the blimp might come that way, but no blimps were sighted.

We will have another chance at seeing the blimp because it will be covering another golf tournament in Charlotte (about 160 miles away) the first weekend in May…

32,000 + 73,000 = 8 Day Blogging Hole

Somewhere in the last eight days on one of Donna’s trip’s to the gym the Lady Bug passed the 32,000 mile mark.

This past Sunday afternoon on the way home from the South Carolina coast the CTBNL passed through the 73,000 mile mark.

In that same time frame we have taken 8 Motoring Challenge photos worth almost 20 points, but we missed out on the big one (a separate post that will happen sooner than eight days from now.)

Hey, Where Ya Been?

I’ve been here, just one part busy, one part watching TV and one part not feeling like writing anything.

Turns out I wasn’t the savior the Red Sox needed. I watched half a game on ESPN then listened to the other half a game and they lost. I listened to a game and they won. I didn’t listen to two games and they won one and lost the other. Since the last time I posted they have played .500 ball, which if that trend continues probably won’t get them in the playoffs, but it may keep them from finishing last.

I have been re-watching some of my favorite Marvel Cinematic Universe flicks. Not because I’m anxiously awaiting the next Avengers movie, but more because everyone is talking about them. There are a ton of lists online how to watch all of them in order to prepare yourself to watch Avengers: Endgame. There are 21 movies released so far and I was surprised to realize that I had copies of more than half of them. Growing up I was a fan of both the Iron Man and Captain America comic books, so I have the movies with those guys in the titles. I was a casual Thor reader too, so I have those three flicks. The first Ant Man movies struck the right cord with me, so I got the second one too. Never knew of the Guardians of the Galaxy but the first movie was fun, so I picked up the second one as well. I haven’t re-watched it yet and I may not because if I recall correctly I didn’t like it as much as the first. But then again, I am a sucker for origin stories and so far I have liked the first movie of the hero’s series more than any of the followups.

Not just watching movies either. I went back and re-binge watched Season 1 of Killing Eve because Season 2 started last Sunday night and I wanted to remember what went on. I also re-binge watched Season 1 of Fleabag because Season 2 is coming to America soon.

Add on top of that, Donna and I spent nearly 32 hours over 4 days this past weekend sitting on the screened porch watching golf on TV. Neither one of us golfs and we don’t watch it any other time of the year, but, because we have actually trod the hallowed grounds of Augusta National, every year for the first week of April we become fans and watch The Masters. Thank heaven for masters.com where you can watch practically the whole tournament commercial free. You just need to select “featured groups” and they follow 2 groups over the whole 18 holes and when they finish you get 2 more groupings.

We also managed to sneak in a couple of short Moss Motoring Challenge trips locally. We snagged 5 on Saturday morning and 3 yesterday afternoon.

72,000 Grains of Pine Pollen

I didn’t have an idea for how to use seventy two thousand in the title of this post, so I went back and looked to see what I used when the Emperor hit that mark over a little over 11 years ago: 72,000 Grains of Rice. Perfect.

Last Friday I washed both cars.

The Miata because it needed it. The other day I leaned into it to get something out of the center console and when I stood up there were dark smudges on the both thighs of my khaki hued jeans. Man, do silver colored cars hide road grime well.

The Mini because it needed it. When Donna got home from the gym on Thursday she complained because you could see of fine coating of about 72,000 pine pollen grains built up on the roof of the car. Man, does a gloss black roof show yellow pine pollen grains.

On our day trip Saturday to gather a few Moss Motoring Challenge points just outside Tennille, Georgia the CTBNL passed through the 72,000 mile mark.

Cocktail Weenie?

A couple of weeks ago we drove over to Atlanta, GA (approx. 300 mile round trip) and spent the night in a motel to take a picture of the Miata with a Wienermobile to score 9 points in this year’s Moss Motoring Challenge.

Now, for next weekend, we are considering driving to Gainesville, FL (more than 300 miles one way) and spending a night in a motel to take a picture of the Mini Wienermobile which is worth zero points in this year’s Moss Motoring Challenge.

Seeing as it is worth zero points, if we go, what should we drive? The Mini, to take a picture with it and the Wienermobile made from a Mini. Or should we drive the Miata, just to have a photo of it with both sizes of Wienermobiles.

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?

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