MiataWorld II: Day Six

by Alan J. Claffie

Real quick update here because it's late and tomorrow morning starts pretty early for us here in Texas.

We started the day going to the Cavanaugh Flight Museum where we had signed up to have our cars photographed by an old piece of aircraft. We tried to caravan again ("Caravan to the Cavanaugh" being a bit of a tongue-twister) but once again what started out fairly orderly quickly turned into every man for himself as the espirit d'corps was quite lacking both in lane choice/changes on the highway and traffic lights on the secondary streets. You'd get a group together and when the light turned green the front cars turned into Don Garlits and the rest would be left to fend for themselves. At least this time we brought both directions in the event book and the GPS so we could manage on our own if need be.

We got there and just completely overwhelmed the place, but the photos were done in an orderly fashion and we'll see the results of those in the coming days I imagine.

Speaking of photos, the third and final photog from the Gap posted his from last Tuesday, here a link for the page of thumbnails where we make our first appearance. "Killboy" was probably handicapped by the late day sun but between the three sites we've found there's more than adequate choices in which pictures we'll order to blow up for the office wall. I'm a little disappointed that Killboy only caught Kate on our third and final pass cause I was putting on a show for him when I came through that corner first.

On the plus side, we're thinking of swinging by there again on the ride home. But that's not really yet in the planning stages.

We attempted to tackle the Amazing Rally that had both Dallas and Ft.Worth legs. It's a fun rally with directions and questions and answers, but fairly early on in the Dallas leg, which we tried first, we had to answer what seemed like a couple dozen questions in one neighborhood, which required parking the car and getting out and walking. The area in question was the locale where Kennedy was shot, so we had plenty of history, memorials, and conspiracy theorists to surround ourselves with, but for a driving event that was a lot of time out of the car. After spending way too much time chasing those answers and seeing no realistic end in sight, much less getting started on the Ft.Worth leg, we packed it in and headed back to headquarters.

Dinner was a Hawaiian themed buffet so I went downstairs to the sports bar to get a burger to bring back with me and we were treated to speeches and stuff by various Mazda personnel before they drew for the biggest door prize of the weekend, a 2010 MX-5 built to the winner's order. We didn't win which has Kate cursing but me breathing a sigh of relief, like we need more cars.

As I said before, Sunday morning comes early. We start gathering for the parade to Texas Motor Speedway at 7:30 AM for an 8:00 sharp takeoff with a police escort and everything. Once we get there, well, who knows how it'll go but we've got all day to figure that out. Hope to have plenty of stories and photos when it's all said and done.

More later.

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