Day 9 - July 27, 2014 - Golden Gate Field Berkley, Ca. to Reno, Nv. - MINI Wedding Day!!
This day is going to be epic. To start with, La Sara and I were up bright and early and ready to go. We said goodbye to Coco in Alameda and set out for Golden Gate Field in Berkley, the morning meetup to start the rally for MINI Takes the States. Our anticipation is electric! The air is cold out, with a breeze coming right off the Pacific Ocean and the San Fransisco Bay. But can we feel it? NO! It's MINI Takes the States! We stopped quickly to get a photo of Tycoon with the bay in the back ground before we start our "Chowder to Chow'dah" cannonball run. Ok, I took a selfie too.
We arrived to a madhouse! Over 700 MINIs had arrived to attend the kickoff morning meetup.
Tycoon found her spot in the pack and La Sara and I set off to get our MINI swag and some food. MINI USA had brought in several food trucks that were cooking us all breakfast, they had set out massive amounts of coffee, water, and tea. As I was about to go get in to line at the food trucks they announced they wanted the "Coast to Coast Crew" over at the beach to take a photo of all of us going the whole way. Sara got in line for the food and I got into the mob for the photo. This year there are more people going the whole way than ever before! Over 450 MINIs going from coast to coast. I spotted a Philly MINI member, Mike Marzo, in the crowd!
Once we had completed our photo, Sara and I browsed some of the MINIs that were in attendance.
After browsing the vast collection of MINIs we were called over to a makeshift skate park where our MC for the trip had a surprise for us. Tony Hawk was going to skate over MINI's as they drove through the pipes as our send off!! Go TONY!!
Last night I was contacted by BuzzFeed who is following the whole route and asked if I would be part of a documentary they were shooting covering the whole event. So after the excitement of Tony they quickly interviewed me before we all ran for our cars.
Then we were off to our MINIs! Get in, hurry, lets go and do this! Can you tell we are excited. It's really happening!
Off we went. On to the freeway and headed East! The route that MINI USA had designed for us took us in to Sonoma, Nappa and wine country. Sara and I decided we absolutely had to take a few pictures of Tycoon with the vines.
While driving I decided that the baby vines that were all over the place had little voices that were very high pitched. And they said "come back and drink me in 5 years". It was a pretty funny moment for Sara and me. There were a few little hiccups along the route. The directions MINI gave us were vague at times and some people had a hard time following them. There seemed to be MINIs zig zagging all over Nappa at one point. Sara and I got lucky, we made it to the turn for Liberty Road first and boy did we get lucky. It was an AWESOME twistie road through the hills and boy did we rip it up! It was a blast, we had smiles plastered to our faces. After the twisties we were coming to the outskirts of Sacramento and saw this sign and knew we had to stop and take a picture. YOLO.
But since we were one of the few MINIs who followed the route and made it, we ended up being on of the last ones to Niello MINI in Sacramento for the lunch stop. So we pulled a pit stop, grabbed a quick box lunch (which was yummy) made a potty break and were about to get back on the road when a possible disaster presented itself.
We got a message from Sami, the bride of our MINI wedding that was supposed to be tonight, they were broken down on the side of the road with a malfunction code!! Sami said they were going to try to limp back to Niello MINI so Sara and I decided to hang out for a few to see if maybe we could end up piling them in to Tycoon. A few minutes later they called and said they had managed to clear the code and thought they could limp to Reno, we left to try and catch up. We flew through the Donner Pass headed towards Nevada as Sami and Brian and their MINI Brooklyn limped along with no turbo. We caught up with them at the Nevada border.
Brooklyn, Kowalski, and Tycoon drove straight to the wedding site from here to quickly try and set up and drop off some things for the wedding before heading in to Reno to try and get the bride and groom ready on time! Turns out the bride ended up being about 45 minutes late. Oops. But really, the wedding went off perfectly, despite the problems. And Brian and Sami are MARRIED!!
Post wedding bliss everyone drove, all be it a bit late, to the evening event hosted by MINI at the National Bowling Museum in Reno. This has to be the biggest bowling alley I have ever seen in my life, and it was filled with MINIacs. I was a bit exhausted, so was Kyle who decided In N Out was in order. But we hung out for a bit and watched the bowling.
We really didn't think we would see Sami and Brian after the wedding, but they surprised us as we were about to leave the evening event. I caught them mooching :) And then we all went and found the Reno sign.
Phew, was that really one day? It sure feels like it was much longer. But what a great first day. Tomorrow will be a busy one as well. BuzzFeed has asked to follow me for half of the day to document some of Tycoon, Sara and my adventures.
I'm really trying my best to update the blog the day of but with all the photos and trying to get things posted I don't think I have gone to sleep before midnight one day yet. Who knew this blogging thing took so much time and work? But I hope you guys are liking the pictures and the stories. Keep checking back and follow us on Facebook and Twitter by searching the hashtags #TycoontheMINI and #MTTS2014 plus then you can see some of the other photos people from the road are taking.
Goodnight!
This day is going to be epic. To start with, La Sara and I were up bright and early and ready to go. We said goodbye to Coco in Alameda and set out for Golden Gate Field in Berkley, the morning meetup to start the rally for MINI Takes the States. Our anticipation is electric! The air is cold out, with a breeze coming right off the Pacific Ocean and the San Fransisco Bay. But can we feel it? NO! It's MINI Takes the States! We stopped quickly to get a photo of Tycoon with the bay in the back ground before we start our "Chowder to Chow'dah" cannonball run. Ok, I took a selfie too.
We arrived to a madhouse! Over 700 MINIs had arrived to attend the kickoff morning meetup.
Tycoon found her spot in the pack and La Sara and I set off to get our MINI swag and some food. MINI USA had brought in several food trucks that were cooking us all breakfast, they had set out massive amounts of coffee, water, and tea. As I was about to go get in to line at the food trucks they announced they wanted the "Coast to Coast Crew" over at the beach to take a photo of all of us going the whole way. Sara got in line for the food and I got into the mob for the photo. This year there are more people going the whole way than ever before! Over 450 MINIs going from coast to coast. I spotted a Philly MINI member, Mike Marzo, in the crowd!
Once we had completed our photo, Sara and I browsed some of the MINIs that were in attendance.
The Peeps MINI, a sponsored MINI
The OUT Magazine MINI, a sponsored MINI
Our WiFi F56, whenever they stop they create a hotspot for people on MTTS
This one is for my Mom who loves pink MINIs
The Chive MINI!
Despite having their F56 broken in to in San Fransisco the night before, the guys with MINI Goes All Around were there and ready to go.
Last night I was contacted by BuzzFeed who is following the whole route and asked if I would be part of a documentary they were shooting covering the whole event. So after the excitement of Tony they quickly interviewed me before we all ran for our cars.
Then we were off to our MINIs! Get in, hurry, lets go and do this! Can you tell we are excited. It's really happening!
Off we went. On to the freeway and headed East! The route that MINI USA had designed for us took us in to Sonoma, Nappa and wine country. Sara and I decided we absolutely had to take a few pictures of Tycoon with the vines.
While driving I decided that the baby vines that were all over the place had little voices that were very high pitched. And they said "come back and drink me in 5 years". It was a pretty funny moment for Sara and me. There were a few little hiccups along the route. The directions MINI gave us were vague at times and some people had a hard time following them. There seemed to be MINIs zig zagging all over Nappa at one point. Sara and I got lucky, we made it to the turn for Liberty Road first and boy did we get lucky. It was an AWESOME twistie road through the hills and boy did we rip it up! It was a blast, we had smiles plastered to our faces. After the twisties we were coming to the outskirts of Sacramento and saw this sign and knew we had to stop and take a picture. YOLO.
But since we were one of the few MINIs who followed the route and made it, we ended up being on of the last ones to Niello MINI in Sacramento for the lunch stop. So we pulled a pit stop, grabbed a quick box lunch (which was yummy) made a potty break and were about to get back on the road when a possible disaster presented itself.
We got a message from Sami, the bride of our MINI wedding that was supposed to be tonight, they were broken down on the side of the road with a malfunction code!! Sami said they were going to try to limp back to Niello MINI so Sara and I decided to hang out for a few to see if maybe we could end up piling them in to Tycoon. A few minutes later they called and said they had managed to clear the code and thought they could limp to Reno, we left to try and catch up. We flew through the Donner Pass headed towards Nevada as Sami and Brian and their MINI Brooklyn limped along with no turbo. We caught up with them at the Nevada border.
Brooklyn, Kowalski, and Tycoon drove straight to the wedding site from here to quickly try and set up and drop off some things for the wedding before heading in to Reno to try and get the bride and groom ready on time! Turns out the bride ended up being about 45 minutes late. Oops. But really, the wedding went off perfectly, despite the problems. And Brian and Sami are MARRIED!!
Post wedding bliss everyone drove, all be it a bit late, to the evening event hosted by MINI at the National Bowling Museum in Reno. This has to be the biggest bowling alley I have ever seen in my life, and it was filled with MINIacs. I was a bit exhausted, so was Kyle who decided In N Out was in order. But we hung out for a bit and watched the bowling.
We really didn't think we would see Sami and Brian after the wedding, but they surprised us as we were about to leave the evening event. I caught them mooching :) And then we all went and found the Reno sign.
Phew, was that really one day? It sure feels like it was much longer. But what a great first day. Tomorrow will be a busy one as well. BuzzFeed has asked to follow me for half of the day to document some of Tycoon, Sara and my adventures.
I'm really trying my best to update the blog the day of but with all the photos and trying to get things posted I don't think I have gone to sleep before midnight one day yet. Who knew this blogging thing took so much time and work? But I hope you guys are liking the pictures and the stories. Keep checking back and follow us on Facebook and Twitter by searching the hashtags #TycoontheMINI and #MTTS2014 plus then you can see some of the other photos people from the road are taking.
Goodnight!
I'm loving the blog! Keep up the great work!
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