Made it back to Knoxville

After the awards, of which we did not place in the money, we headed out into the French Quarter. We went down Bourbon Street and headed over to Pat O'Brien's to get some hurricanes and some dinner. We then headed over to Cafe du Monde to get a few beignets. After that we called it a night. We could be lying or we could be lame and telling the truth, but we will never tell!

We woke up this morning for the long and boring drive back to Knoxville. The drive was uneventful, and since there were no challenges, we got to sleep a little while the other was driving. However, somewhere around Birmingham the car did develop an interesting sound in the exhaust. It is probably an exhaust leak, but right now we really aren't to concerned about it.

Now, we just need to decide what to do with the car. It is not the most comfortable, but it has been very reliable and gets awesome gas mileage. Anywhere here are a few pics from yesterday. Unfortunately, we did not get too many since we were busy snapping pics of license plates.

Here are some coming across Lake Ponchatrain:





Here are a few pics of the destruction from Katrina over on the north side of town:

We Made it to the French Quarter!!!

Not really a whole lot to post about today. We left the hotel around 9:00 and started on our way to New Orleans. The car ran well, but we did have to put in about a 1/2 can of R-134a to keep us cool down here. One thing we have really been shocked about on this trip is the lack of traffic. We figured, that it being a holiday weekend, the traffic would be really bad. Maybe the price of fuel is making some people decide to just stay home. Once we got onto the south side of Lake Ponchatrain we saw that there was still a lot of damage from hurricane Katrina.

Our challenge today was to take pictures of license plates from as many states as possible. Our strategy for this challenge was to hit up the hotel parking lots (in the morning before everyone left), rest stops, truck stops, Cracker Barrels and U-Hauls. Yes, I said U-Hauls. If you notice, every single U-Haul truck has a plate from Arizona. However, the trailers have plates from all over. We ended up with 42 states and Quebec. We did pretty well. We will have the awards ceremony at 8:00 and then we will head into the French Quarter. We probably won't be out too late because we would like to get an early start in the morning. Dave will probably post a few pictures here shortly, but there really isn't much to see between Gadsden, Alabama and here.

3rd Leg?

Dave pretty much covered it all so I will add some comments in blue.

320 miles, a little bit of refrigerant, and oil change, a tire rotation, four states (NC, TN, GA, and AL), and a fuel filter...

We picked up our stuff at Advance Auto Parts in Asheville. They didn't have a fuel filter so we ended up at a competitors store. A guy that used to come over and autocross with us was working there. So it was good to see Daniel.

Today we went from Asheville, NC to Gadsden, AL via some pretty cool roads. We left from Asheville around 9 a.m. and hit I-40 West. From there we took the first exit on the TN side (#451) and quickly ran out of road (we thought). I recognized the area because Jess and I launched a raft trip from there last year. It is paved for a very short distance and then it turns into what looks like a gravel driveway. We turned around and asked for directions and were told that the gravel road went for about 3 miles and then became a paved road that would get us into Gatlinburg. At this point we were traveling with J.D., who is also from Knoxville.















The gravel was pretty rough in a few places, but fun, and it got us to SR32 which was just as much fun as Deal's Gap but with ZERO traffic. I will definitely be taking the Miata back up there soon.












































From there we went through Gatlinburg, Cherokee, and then Bryson City. We ran Deal's Gap a few times (the Festiva held together!!!) and then headed down to my house, which was very close to the Rally Route. The Festiva got an oil change, tire rotation (the alignment is off and is wearing the tires), and a fuel filter. We also threw the wheels on a bubble balancer and found the tire that has been vibrating on the interstate. A few stick on wheel weights and we had a smoother ride.

We had some lunch at the Greenback corner and left for Alabama around 4:30. The trip down to Gadsden was uneventful and we arrived around 7:30pm.

Interesting Coincidence

Click the picture and look at the license plate. Room 223 (someone, ahem added the decimal point) was our hotel room # in H'burg. These pictures either mean something to you or they don't.

Day 3 Challenge

Today's challenge was to take a picture of the oldest vehicle that we could find. The only requirements were that it be along the challenge route and it must have four wheels (attached). Oh, they also nixed going into any of the car museums in Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge.

As we were coming down out of Deal's Gap, Tyler somehow managed to see this Model T that was hidden behind a wrecker. After stopping and taking pictures we spoke to the owner and found that it was a 1920 Model T Touring.

Pic of the Festiva with new stickers.

Elvis Challenge Pictures

In front of Advance Auto Parts headquarters (in Roanoke):














Some family in a gas station parking lot decided to humor the crazy people:














In front of Jack of the Woods in downtown Asheville:














We didn't think they'd let us count this one (they didn't) but we took it anyway:














Cheesburger in Paradise in Asheville:














Lots of other interesting people in downtown Asheville (Trix are for kids):

Day 2 Post from Tyler

This morning we woke up and went outside to be greeted by about 70 Elviseses or Elvi or whatever the plural of Elvis is. There were fat Elvises in jumpsuits, skinny jailhouse Elvi, Hawaiian Elvises, Army Elvi, a little doggy Elvis, and every Elvis you could ever imagine and some you probably wouldn't want to.

We got off to a fairly good start. Dave was feeling a little rough so I took the wheel for the Day. We headed to the starting line. We pulled out from the hotel in H'burg and were handed our challenge for the day. Since we are were dressed as the king today's challenge was to have a picture made with at least three "innocent" bystanders. These innocence of these folks was defined as not having any association with the rally. Some of the other stipulations were that your entire team had to be in the picture. This means not only did you have to find willing photographees you had to find a willing photographer if you weren't smart enough to bring along a tripod. Bonus points were awarded if you were able to get at least 10 people in the picture in addition to the team members. Some teams hung around H'burg and James Madison University. We decided to go ahead and hit the road.

Once we hit the road we did a little a little thinking of our strategy. Our goal was to get as many pictures with 10+ people in them as possible. We figured to do this our best bet was to find a large group of folks willing to have their picture taken with two Elvi. We also remembered that the headquarters for Advance Auto Parts is in Roanoke. A quick google search gave us an address and with the GPS we found that it was only about a 5 minute journey off of I-81. Now when we were preparing the car almost all the new parts and fluids we replaced on the car came from Advance. we thought it would be cool to see if they would have ten of their employees willing to take a picture. They were actually very excited to see us. Not only did they bring us 10 employees for the picture, they hooked us up with some sweet new stickers for the car (which will go on in the morning) and some T-Shirts. So a big thanks to Drew, Carrie, Evan, Kara and all the employees at Advance that helped us get an excellent picture for the challenge.

After we left Advance we headed over to a nearby deli to grab some lunch. The deli was actually a sit down restaurant that was real busy. It took a lot longer than expected to get our food, but the waitresses did stop for a moment to pose for a picture. After lunch it was back on the road.

We lost a lot of time at lunch so we decided to take the most direct route to Asheville. We took I-81 and caught I-26 over to Asheville. One the way we met up with a few other teams and took some more of our challenge pics. Once we got past Erwin (Home of Hanging Mary) we went up some big mountains leading into NC. I had to downshift quite a bit to be able to keep up with the Sisters of FoMoCo. Sometimes, I was even going down to 3rd. The mighty Festy chugged on up the mountains with it's 1.3 liters doing all they could.

We made it into Asheville and on to Jessica's (Dave's girlfriend in case you forgot) parent's house in Fletcher. We are crashing here this evening so another big thanks goes out to them as well. We spent the evening downtown where the fine folks of Asheville were very willing to help out with the challenge. We had a barley soda over at Jack of the Wood. We finished all of our pictures and were able to get four with 10+ people in them. Jessica's parents met up with us at the hotel to look at some of the other cars on the rally. We then headed over to Cheeseburger in Paradise for a nice dinner. It is late and Dave has retired for the evening. So we will unfortunately have to skip the pics for now. We will get them up sometime tomorrow. They'll be worth the wait, I promise.

Day One Comments from Tyler

First a little blog business:

1. If you are new to the blogging thing be sure to notice that the posts are in reverse chronological order. Also, only a few posts show on the opening page. The best thing to do view the blog is to click on the May Archive over on the right and bookmark it in Firefox (shame on you, if you are using Internet Explorer). CLICK HERE for a direct link.

2. I have to moderate each comment before it will show up on the blog. If I don't do this we get spammed a lot. So please keep leaving your comments and we will try to check in and get your comments posted up soon.

As Dave said, our day was fairly uneventful. The challenges (2 today) were tough. One required some quick thinking. The other required quick observation. This rally really isn't a race it is a lot like the Amazing Race TV show except there is no race to the Pit Stop. Points are awarded for being able to do a portion or complete a challenge.

As we left the starting line at about 9:45 we were handed a manila envelope with a $1 bill stapled to it. Opening the envelope we saw there were two challenges. The first one had to be completed by 10:00 am. We were to proceed to a K-Mart that was about 3 miles from the hotel. Once there we were supposed to buy as many different items with that dollar as possible. Seeing how there was very little time we had to think quick...

Dave dropped me off and I made a mad dash into the store.
candy isle.... too expensive
cat food.... $.48 a can SCORE!!!
WAIT!! Ramen noodles $.20 each and three different flavors, beef, shrimp AND chicken DOUBLE SCORE!!!!
There is no tax on food items in NY... TRIPLE SCORE!!!
Crap!!! Time is running out get to the checkout.
Hey look at those 7 different designs of gift cards that can be purchased for ANY amount...

5 CENT GIFT CARDS FOR THE WIN!!!!!


So we head out with 3 packs of 20 cent ramen noodles and 7 gift cards with a value of 5 cents each for a grand total of $.95 cents. Wooohooooooo!


After the security guard at the door checked our receipt, we headed to the car. So with that challenge complete we head out of S.I. Let me tell you, there were about 100 of us running around that K-Mart looking for as many things that they could buy for a dollar. That place was trashed. They are probably still cleaning up the K-Mart on Staten Island.

The second challenge was a "photo challenge". In talking with some of the 2006 BABErally veterans, they have challenges where you have to take pictures of certain things, and then show them to the marshals at the end of the day. Today we were given four sheets of paper that each had four photos on them. You were supposed to take the same picture as we made our journey to H' burg. the problem is that the pictures were mostly of road signs. The pictures were cropped so you could only see a portion of the sign. Then on what was left of the sign several of the symbols, words, or numbers were electronically deleted from the picture. So you had to not only take the picture, it was necessary to figure out what you were supposed to be taking a picture of. To make it even more difficult most of the pictures were on the Jersey Turnpike so you couldn't exactly turn around or stop to take the picture. Dave was driving during this challenge. It was very hard to navigate, look at four pages of pictures that I had taped to the dashboard and keep the tunes rockin' at the same time. We only ended up getting 3 of the 16 pictures.

We chatted with several of the other competitors today. They are from all over the US and we even have a few teams from Great Britain as well (This is obvious when you look at some of the pics below). There is a wide spectrum of people on the rally, but everyone seems to be a car enthusiast and talking about cars is always an easy way to strike up a conversation with someone. It's funny when you get around a large group of car folks. You don't know their name, but you could identify them by what car they drive. I think some of our fellow autocrossers out there know what I am taking about. It's been a fun first Day 1 and Dave is already talking about next year.

Well that is about it for Today. We have a late 10 am start tomorrow and we are heading to Asheville, NC so we should have some more nice scenery driving in the mountains. Hopefully our good luck with the car will continue. As far as mileage goes, we are almost halfway done with our trip (Knoxville - New York - New Orleans - Knoxville) and I am almost half asleep. So I am off to bed!

Day One Wrap Up

Tally for the day: 405 miles, 40 mpg (doesn't seem to matter if the A/C is on or off), 5 states (NY, NJ, DE, MD, and VA), no oil, and half a can of refrigerant. The Festiva decided not to use any oil today, but our A/C did start getting warm around noon. We threw a little more refrigerant in and it was nice and cold again. I'm actually pretty impressed with the R12 to R134a conversion... I didn't think it would cool so well.

We were a bit worried that the coolant temp. would climb too much when we started climbing up Skyline drive. We turned off the A/C and opened the windows to better enjoy the mountain air (it was very nice weather and pretty cool as we gained altitude). The coolant temp moved around a bit but was nothing to worry about.

We made it to the hotel around 7:00, then hit the Ruby Tuesdays for dinner and turned in our challenge points. I'll let Tyler fill you in on the challenge items.

When we got back from dinner, some enterprising Advance Auto employee had left something on the car:
















Are they trying to tell us something?

Day One Pics 7

The car wasn't giving us any serious trouble, so we took the alternate route via Skyline Drive in Virginia. We were glad we did:

Day One Pics 6

The EVIL Festiva ^^^^^^
...with a sweet A-Team paint job.















Pic of the limo with the duct tape roof complete:














The UNreliant

Day One Pics 5

Some pics need no explanation:












































The car above starts up on diesel and then (once the engine is warm) switches over to burning used cooking oil.

Day One Pics 4

This car smelled so bad I couldn't get within 5 ft. of it without the urge to hurl.




























Our buddy from Knoxville:














The Baked Potato Team. These guys are the only car that I am aware of that got pulled over. Not once but twice. They videotaped the bridge leaving S.I. or the bridge going into Delaware. Someone must have thought they were terrorists and called homeland security. They were also pulled over for littering because their car was gradually shedding it's aluminum foil.

Day One Pics 3

This is a Toyota Station Wagon with a Ford grill. It was bought sight unseen.














The Lebacon:














Our co-competitor from Knoxville:














The Clutch Dumpers:














These guys pulled out of a parking space in front of the Hotel in S.I. looking all cool and blasting the British National Anthem. Unfotunately, the hotel had those guy wire strung up to indicate the 9' maximum height. After backing out of their parking space and driving about 15 ft they had to stop and dismantle the flag pole. It was a real buzzkill for them.

Day One Pics 2

Sisters of FoMoCo:














Another shot of the ducks:














The Coilpackers:














Rusty the Dung Beetle:














Guard Dog:

Day One Pics 1

A few pictures of the car with all the stickers on:












































and some of the other participants:

These guys are raising money for one of their friends to have a proton laser treatment for an eye tumor in lieu of having his eye removed. They are selling the ducks. People "buy" a duck and they get to personalize a duck that has been "shoo goo'd" to the van. They have raised about 17k of the 50k cost of the surgery.














These guys (and gal) have since duct taped the entire roof. They made an appearance wearing two really bad tuxedos and the girl was wearing a really bad pink dress with pink Converse Chuck Taylors. Their bumper reads, "Off like a prom dress."