Motoring Challenge

Another One In The Bag

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

One-Lane Bridge: Old Hoggard Mill Bridge over the Ichawaynochaway Creek


One Lane Bridge

Favorite Point Story

Photo with 5+ Challengers :Thank you Beth Wallace for putting the 5 Challenger event together and thank you Beth Wallace for the image, because both Donna and I are in the 5 Challenger Photo I don’t have my own image, so I cribbed one from your FB post to use on the Trello Board. (2/24/18)


Photo with 5+ Challengers! The first 4 cars were parked in a tight group of spots right up front, but there wasn’t another one open near us for the last arrival, so we weren’t sure what to do when they got there. Until someone wondered out loud what the most of the rest of us were thinking, “Maybe we could line our cars up right on the wide sidewalk entrance way.” Then someone else piped in with that eternal truism, “It is always easier to ask forgiveness than it is to ask permission.” A plan was born. When car #5 arrived we briefed them on the plan, and we all backed into position.

Least Favorite Point

Astrological Signs 01: Aries Lane in Crystal Lake Mobile Home Park in Myrtle Beach, SC. (3/31/2018)


Astrological Signs – Aries This year they wanted a photo of a sign with either the name or symbol of all 12 astrological signs. Donna found a subdivision near Myrtle Beach that had street names of 11 of the 12. While it made easy pickings, none of them we especially photogenic, so we slowly tried to replace as many as we could. This is one of the 4 we ended up having to use.

Easiest Point

Bicycle Built for Two with Riders: As usual with us we leave the easy ones and the ones we know we got in the bag, until the very end. The bicycle built for two was going to be easy as we have one parked right next to the Miata in the garage. We ride at least once a week and it was just a matter of putting the two vehicles and the two people together. While the Miata is longer than the bike, the wheelbases are very similar. (12/3/18)


Bicycle Built for Two with Riders For a lot of people this would be hard, but we own a tandem, it sits right next to the Miata in the garage, so all we had to do was roll them both outside.

Hardest Point

Roller Derby Rink: 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! (11/25/18)


Roller Derby Rink We spent countless hours on the internet researching this and while we actually live around 100 miles near to about 4 Roller Derby teams, every rink we did visit there was no external sign verifying that Roller Derby went on inside. When finally found one and we almost missed our chance.

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.

Four Points By The Skin of Our Teeth


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!

Magically Moosetery Tour

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.

66,000 Roller Skate Bearings

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.

65,000 Something or Other Things

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.

Hope The Window Doesn’t Quit Too

The reason we were at the one-lane bridge yesterday was because we needed a picture of one for the Motoring Challenge. It is worth three points. We have one not too far from home that we used for the challenge back in 2015, so we didn’t want to use it again and we wanted something a little more scenic for this year.

Friday night, while sitting in the hotel, Donna asked, “See if there are any one-lane bridges in south Georgia?” The first one I found was this beauty and it was perfect. Even with having to drive a 1/4 mile of dirt road to get there.

Of the half dozen or so photos we took, the one above was my favorite of the bunch, but there is one problem, no person with flyer in it. We’ll probably submit the one below for the challenge. Who knows, we might be driving right by it on the way home tomorrow, maybe we’ll stop in again…

Tonight when I went to fill it up with gas, I couldn’t get out of the car. I pulled on the door handle and it moved, but nothing happened. Naturally I could not believe what was happening, so I tried pulling it several more times with the same negative results. I could reach out the window and lift the outside handle and the door would open.

I wasn’t trapped, but the window needs to keep working or I would be. I shouldn’t be worried, it isn’t exhibiting any hint of troubles, but then again neither was the inside door handle. I’m guessing that a cable has broken or come unhooked inside the door, should be an easy fix when we get home.

62,000 Broken Sea Shells

Astrological Signs 04: Cancer the Crab. Cancer is the only astrological sign in Crystal Lake Mobile Home Park in Myrtle Beach, SC that doesn’t have a street named after it. (3/31/2018)

I haven’t written a blog post in a week, but in the week previous to that I wrote 4 posts (one of which was in two parts) and created 4 drafts. Tonight I’m going to combine 2 drafts into one post because I can barely remember the fully formed posts I was going to create from them…

For the the 3-day Easter weekend we took a trip to Myrtle Beach. One to get away for a bit, another to enjoy some beach time before the spring breakers get there and third to gather a few Moss Motoring Challenge points.

And gather we did. We tallied at total of one point shy of me being able to use the number in the title of of the post (61.) Nearly half of that total was for getting a sign with the name or symbol of each of the 12 astrological signs. One point each for the first five, 3 points each for the next five and five points each for the last two for a total of thirty.

This turned out to be easy pickings because Donna found a mobile home community in southern Myrtle Beach with streets named for constellations, including 11 of the 12 zodiac signs. Guess what one sign was missing? I’ll give you a hint, would you want to live on a street named for something that causes an uncontrolled division of abnormal cells in a part of your body?

After getting eleven of the twelve needed signs within 15 minutes, it seemed too easy and because for some reason we enjoy making these challenges, well, a real challenge, we decided to see if we could replace the eleven street name signs we have now with signs or objects that depict the logo, like we did for Cancer the Crab. By the time we had finished the weekend we had 7 of the 12 taken care of.

Somewhere between Columbia and Florence the CTBNL passed the 62,000 mile mark.