Long Beach MINI's Motoring for Swag Rally, November 5, 2005

Slideshow!
Judy and I participated in this year's Long Beach Mini Rally, organized by Long Beach MINI, with the help of c3 club. There was an amazing turnout of Classic Minis and new MINIs - I saw one entrant numbered 162! - and it was a lot of fun zooming around Long Beach and stopping at various locations for some unique activities. The organization left a lot to be desired, especially during the first leg of the rally, when we were instructed to ignore the directions on the printed sheet, and just follow the car in front of us. This led to a nighmarish rush/wait scenario through lots of busy traffic, replete with missed stop signals, sudden lane changes, and general chaos. There were lots of things that should have been handled better, especially for an entrance fee of $20/car.

Having said that, it was still a blast! We started at the CSULB Pyramid, made our way to the downtown Long Beach Convention Center - although finding the correct entrance was a "bitch", we never did see "Spike the bulldog", even with someone Long Beach MINI leading the way. Then on to Blair Field to throw some pitches at a target to win bobble-head dolls or little orange foam desktop traffic cones (I managed to sink one pitch into the target, but asked to take home an extra cone in place of the bobble-head), then over to Long Beach MINI for Dinner: Cheeseburgers from In-n-Out Burger, cooked in a mobile kitchen truck - they were great! After dinner, one more leg out past Naples get gelatos for dessert - also excellent, then back, finally to the pyramid and the VIP suite for prizes, snacks, awards, and CSULB Women's Volleyball.

All in all, a day full of frustrations and fun. It's amazing what organization was accomplished, tying together the university, the city sports teams, and the various vendors. And despite the frustration and uncertainties, crossing paths with literally dozens and dozens of Minis again and again was truly enjoyable! I just hope no one got so utterly lost that they gave up and went home...

Judy put together the slide show of the event, including pictures taken by each of us. We didn't manage to get any shots of cross-intersecting streams of MINIs, because we were so busy trying to avoid getting lost.

Please help us with suggestions for captions. Dave@TheRockets.US or Judy@TheRockets.US
Larger images and captions to be added later.

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(Modified 18:05 PDT - November 6, 2005)