Month: April 2017

52,000 Condo Dwellers

After lunch at Big Meats at the Mcleod Farms Roadside Stand & Pumpkin Patch Farm Museum Complex Donna and I left the members of the MMC behind to head down to Hilton Head Island for a couple of days. It was sort of a working vacation as we had to, along with kicking back on the beach, take some interior photos of condos to update the Hilton Head Condo Rentals web page.

Along with all the photo taking and beach walking we still found time to drive around and score a few points in the Moss Motoring Challenge. Because Hilton Head is sort of a playground for the well heeled it cost us money to take the photos. Donna found a street in the Sea Pines Resort that was worth over 30 points in the Scrabble Scramble, but if you want to drive onto the plantation, and you are not a guest or owner, it cost $6 to get a visitor pass. While six dollars sounds like a lot, because Mizzenmast is worth 32 points, it works out to less than 19¢ a point. Compare that with our other Hilton Head Island shot and it was a bargain. We needed a photo of a toll booth and the Cross Island Parkway was right there. The toll was a buck and a quarter and the picture is worth 1 point. The last photo we took was off the island on the way home and it was free.

On the way over to have dinner with Donna the Condo Queen on Sunday night the CTBNL passed by the 52,000 mile mark.

Miatas, Muffins, McBee, Mcleod, Museum & Big Meats

Hard to believe that at one time I had two blogs and wrote in each every night. Plus for a while there I was posting a picture a night in a photo blog as well. Now if I write something twice a week I’m lucky, so for the second time in 2 weeks here is more or less a repeat of my rally wrap from the past Saturday’s MMC event:

Cars, front row from left to right, Dennis & Carol Mason, Mike & Shirley Dyer, Don & Kaye Boltz, Daryl & Sherri Shipman, Karl Splan, Hal & Trudy Scott, Tom Varallo and Brian & Donna Bogardus. Second row from left to right, Joe Varallo, Random Customer #1, Random Customer #2, Barrista and Trash Dumpster.


Donna and I were first to park at our breakfast spot and when Tom backed in next to us the first thing he said was, “You’ll have to put Joe behind you otherwise he’ll get lost.” “He doesn’t follow close enough and if we lose him he won’t know where he is.”

A little back story. Joe is Tom’s younger brother and every year he comes down to help with the Steeplechase (he is an Aiken Sertoma Club member) and when he came over to the tent last week we got to explaining what we were doing this weekend, he thought it sounded like fun, so Donna invited him to come along. Trouble is that Joe is about 6 inches taller than his older brother and would be uncomfortable in a Miata for that length of a drive. We told him we would be happy to have him along even if he was driving a white Chevy Blazer.

Joe didn’t want to interrupt our conga line of Miata and insisted, in spite of of what big brother said, to bring up the rear. The first and third thirds of the drive were on little trafficked 2-lane roads so he should have no issue keeping track of the 8 Miatas ahead of him, but the middle part was on busy I-20 and a stoplight filled US-1 around Columbia where it might get difficult.

We were all together at the exit getting on US-1, but sure enough, somewhere around the 5th traffic light we started to get broken apart. Because we would be on US-1 for for around 25 miles there would be a good chance that the group would come back together. About 10 miles after exiting the Interstate a lot of the cars pulled into a quick stop for the second rest room break. A couple of stragglers pulled in a minute or so later, but that left one car missing. Texts and phone calls were met with radio silence.

After about an uncomfortable 7 or 8 minutes of wondering what might have happened, our wayward driver checked in. Somewhere in a mass of traffic he got off course and before he realized it, his GPS had led him towards the Interstate.

Tom told us he’d just get on I-20 and meet us at the destination.