Motoring Challenge: Baby on Board

This year’s challenge was a little tougher than last year since as of January 8^th we have a newborn! As with years past, we stuck predominantly to back roads and trying to find small towns since they tend to be more interesting than highways. Sometimes our daughter went along for part of the ride, other times it meant arranging a little daycare with relatives, or just going solo.

It also meant staying pretty close to home which made for some creative planning when trying to get to as many locations as possible, but it was also surprising to see just how many locations we could get to within 50 miles – and thus a sub challenge emerged. I knew some items would not happen (8k foot elevation, oceans, etc.) but some surprised me like the ghost town when I remembered the village of Fricks Locks, which is less than five minutes from my house. The village was abandoned years ago when the Limerick Nuclear Power Plant was built nearby, now it is a historical location and you can see the cooling towers looming tall in the background over the small brick houses.

The Prince of Darkness Strikes Again!!! I couldn’t resist a photo with the hood up on this ominously named road for British cars. Luckily the car did restart after taking the photo.

The addition of lakes and rivers was fun this year. Our area of Eastern Pa is littered with small rivers and creeks, but they don’t always have signs. The creeks tend to wander and you often find yourself slowing down at a bridge just to end up saying to yourself, “Wait that’s the same creek I crossed five times in the past ten miles, oh well.”

We visited the world’s largest clothespin and John Coltrane’s house (historic landmark) in Philadelphia. I always thought the clothespin was random and funny as a kid, the only thing that makes it more random is parking a mini on a street corner nearby. When searching for historic landmarks, as a saxophone player, Coltrane’s house was the definite choice to stop at even if it isn’t located in the greatest neighborhood.

Jazz musician John Coltrane’s house near Fairmont Park in Philadelphia – listed on the national register of historic landmarks.

For the movie scene location I had to stop at the Colonial Theater in my hometown of Phoenixville. The b-rated horror movie “The Blob” was filmed at various locations in the area, but the movie theater was one of the most famous scenes when the Blob attacks it and everyone runs out the front doors screaming. I remember when the theater was on the brink of bankruptcy in the 90’s and as long as the one movie they were playing was the one you felt like watching it was only $3.00 so my high school self and friends would end up frequently going there. Now they host Blob Fest where you can watch the movie on the big screen and they’ll stop it during the movie theater scene so the audience can all run out into the street screaming!

We’ll see how we stack up this year. Luckily our $50 gift certificate from last year’s competition came in handy when I closed the Mini’s door and the driver’s side window decided it had lost the will to go on and shattered into a million pieces. Thankfully Moss had a new window in stock, which was much easier to install than the long arduous task of vacuuming all the glass chips out of the door and car interior. Thanks for running the challenge once again this year, we had fun!

–Mike Hoinowski
1970 Innocenti Minimatic
1962 Triumph Herald

Just for fun: this strange truck located at “Little Richards Lunch Box” south of Bally Pa.

I tried to get the biggest tow truck I could. I found this 50 ton beast at a local truck repair business, and it only seemed proper to bring the mini for a picture next to it.

I know there’s no British car in these photos, but I thought you might find them to be fun. Instead it’s the ’91 VW Vanagon camper my parents have owned since new and has been all over the country at this point. Each year we camp out at the Vintage Grand Prix at Watkins Glen to watch the races. We just took the van this year, no lbc, but we did get to drive the van around the track with 40 some other VW Vans that were also in attendance. Some people left their canoes and trailers on to go around the track, we just crammed 8 people in our van for the ride.