Another Gregorian calendar year has come and gone. In 2014 I published 191 blog posts for a rate of a little over 1/2 a post per day. This gave me roughly 16 a month to choose from when creating my top post of the month compilation, something I like to call:
I burned all the data for our 2014 Moss Motoring Challenge entry to a disc tonight. Tomorrow it goes in the mail. We ended up with 125 points which in one way seems like a lot, but in others it doesn’t.
We really fell down on a couple things. First was Car Shows, we got only 2, leaving 8 points on the table. That should be easily fixable, just need to find one early in the year and go to it. Once there we should find a flyer for every other car show within a couple hundred mile radius.
Second was we scored 11 states, which is almost a 1/4 of the available Lower 48, but still left a lot of unchecked spots on the form. A quick Google search for driving through all 50 states returns a nearly 7,000 mile one way excursion from Maine to Montana that should take a mere 124 hours. So what was our problem? Well…how many miles and how long will it take to get to both the start and the ending points?
But looking at the map it seems like if we start a loop here in SC and travel west to Texas up through the states just west of the Mississippi River and then follow some of that route backwards to Maine, then down the east coast we could get about 3/4 of the states in a couple weeks.
I think with a little dedication, 150 points might be possible this year. Moss has got the 2015 Challenge PDF up already, so Donna and I are making loose plans…
Yesterday’s posted photo is the last one for the Moss Motoring Chllenge. We went out today to retake that Horse Track photo because we really didn’t like that pile of tree limbs leftover from February’s Ice-aggedon that was visible behind the car. Well, guess what, that spot must be where they always put that sort of thing because there was a different pile in the same place there today. So we said forget it, and we’ll use the photo above from March.
The last picture taken on our 2-Day Moss Motoring Challenge Photo Excursion is the above photo. We snapped a total of 48 photos and accomplished 9 objectives worth 11 points altogether. We traveled a little over 600 miles on 2 tanks of gas. We had breakfast at home on Christmas morning and dinner at home today. In between we had a picnic lunch next to the Flat Creek Quick Stop, a Chinese buffet for Christmas dinner, breakfast at DD and pizza with my sister at One West in Hendersonville.
Now all that remains is taking the photo that will be the one that is closest to home, something less than a mile away, something we have already taken a photo of nearly 10 months ago and are slightly unhappy with, a Horse Track. Once we get that picture we will have scored 125 points out of a possible 201.
Right down to the wire. We have until the 31st of December to get our Moss Motoring Challenge photos in the mail to California, so we are out and about racking up the final few points available to us in the “near” neighborhood. Kershaw County, Florence County, City of Quinby and York County. We also snagged a couple bonus points by taking a picture of a business that had Moss in the name. The photo above will not be my entry, I will submit one of the others taken because of the sort of stupid look on my face in this one.
What happens is we arrive at the photo location, I get out, line up the shot I want and hand the camera to my able bodied assistant. I then go pose in the spot I think I should be standing in and wait. Because I almost never know when the photo is actually being taken I often end up with an odd look on my face or my normal unsmiling one.
Tomorrow we head further west and north to fill in the last three spots on the National Park ledger of the contest. The spots don’t have to be actual National Parks, just sites run by the NPS, so we will get Kings Mountain National Military Park, Cowpens National Battlefield and then the Blue Ridge Parkway. Fortunately for us you don’t have to go on or in them either, as the two Revolutionary War sites are closed for the Christmas Holiday and aren’t open until Saturday. And the Parkway goes in two directions from the closest to us entry and both of them go the wrong way from where we want to go at that point, so all we will be doing is getting photos of the signs at the entrances.
When we swapped drivers just outside Bishopsville I noticed that the Emperor’s odometer read 147002.
I Googled “miata night before Christmas” so I could put a post here tonight without having to actually write something. I knew I had seen one that was Miata related and sure enough there were a bunch of hits, including the 6th one that was from a site called “Life of Brian.” Eleven years ago I quoted the whole original poem. Some of the others were OK, but I opted for this one of unknown vintage on the Flyin’ Miata website, purveyors of all kinds of Miata goodies.
‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the Counties,
The Miatas were parked, warm and safe from the Mounties;
The driving gloves had been packed, with loving care,
Knowing that next Spring they would still be there;His ‘n her Miata owners were nestled snug in their beds,
While visions of forced-induction danced in their heads;
And mamma in her FM shirt, and I in my cap,
Were planning next year’s drives on a dog-eared road map,When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I dropped my Miata Musings to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.What I saw made me weep and shook me to the core,
It was a Velocity Red Mica Mazdaspeed Miata, a two-thousand and four!
With a tall thin man driving, like a bat out of hell,
I knew in a moment it must be Bill Cardell.“Now, ELVIS! now, TRACKDOG!
now, FILOU and TORO!
On, ANGEL on BABY!
on, CUZI and PHOENIX!
To the point of that apex!
cut the driving edge fine!
Now make that last mad dash!
all the way to the finish line!”And I heard on the roof the sound of much fun,
The squealing and chirping of Toyo RA-1’s.
As I grabbed the car keys, and was turning around,
Down the chimney Bill came in with a bound.He was dressed all in Nomex, from his head to his toe,
With tight fitting driving shoes so he could shift just so;
The sunglasses he wore sparkled with a dancing light,
And I thought to myself “How the hell can he see at night?”Around the room to the stockings he raced,
Leaving Hard Dog Deuce bars and a FM Cannon Brace,
I even saw under the tree, by a moon so low and so pale,
Nothing less than a Da’Lan hitch and a brand new Tire Tail!Bill was ready to leave, “Other slalomers yet to go!”,
And make his way through the white winter’s snow.
But he left mine till last, ‘fore he went up the flue,
I found in my stocking a brand new FM-II!He sprang to his droptop, blipping the throttle with a roar,
And I knew right away the 2.0L was stroked, not bored.
I heard him exclaim, ere he squealed out of sight,
“KEEP the needle at REDLINE and CUT the corners Tight!”
In downtown Columbia, although in the mid-40’s, it was cold enough. From Thanksgiving to Mid-January they set up a small outdoor rink in a park next to the Museum of Art in downtown. I’m guessing they are using some of the ice setup from the Carolina Coliseum that the local ECHL team, the Columbia Inferno, used to use when they were in business.
After last weekend’s aborted trip to Florence to start back taking photos for the Moss Motoring Challenge, we decided to start smaller and earlier this weekend. We planned 60 miles one way where we were after two objectives, a skating rink and a roadside oddity.
First stop was in the Columbia suburb of Irmo at an indoor ice complex in a nondescript building on a dead end road near I-26. I’m guessing it was the practice ice for the defunct Inferno. We took a picture and could rightfully cross that “destination” off the list, but we weren’t too happy about it. Seeing as we were headed downtown for our oddity Donna mentioned that she saw where they had a temporary ice rink in a park off Main Street.
The oddity we were going for was the giant fire hydrant that is in the same parking lot as the mural we used for the tunnel destination. Interestingly, both pieces are done by the same artist, a fellow named Blue Sky.
When we took the tunnel photograph back in April, we did take a couple pictures of the Busted Plug Plaza thinking we might use them as a Sneak Peek. Never did use them because we had several nicer and more interesting ones to choose from. We took today’s photo because we thought we could do better and because Moss opened up a bonus slot worth two points for Roadside Oddities. The photo of the hydrant came out a lot better, but I still have to work on my facial expressions…
