PaulGraz's Daily Blog for The Great Ice Cream Run!
Day 1, Saturday June 9th: Sanford
FL to Savannah GA: So we're off the train, but now
we have to wait for our cars to get unloaded. The cars come off in random
order, there's no telling when you get yours. This trip had 101 cars on
board, so it can take a while. The first vehicle to get unloaded was a
large Ford van - and it came off with a broken side mirror (see pics) - that
gave me a rather uneasy feeling! But the owners of the van climbed right
in like nothing was wrong - so maybe that was already broken. As it turned
out, my car was almost last -
and Jarlath & Becca's MINI was the absolute last car
to be unloaded. The good news is that the cars are fine - not a
scratch on them. But it took almost an hour of waiting in the FL sun to
get them.
One of the people we'll be traveling with all week,
Ian Cull, is already waiting
for us at the Amtrak station before we even got off the train. He had his
car shipped to FL by a friend with a horse trailer, and then he flew in Friday
night. Also, the FL area MINI club,
Sunshine MINIs, have a little kickoff
setup for us at a nearby shopping plaza. So once we get our cars, we
sprint over to the Toys R Us to meet the Sunshine MINI gang. It was great
- they setup a tent, had food and drinks, and a goodie bag for everyone
registered on this run. THAT was all very cool! Great hospitality!
However - we could not stay long - we have another big event planned in Savannah
at 6pm, and the delay in getting the cars off the train has now put us behind
schedule. We had to get going. Our plan of sticking to the alternate
route wasn't going to work, that would now take too long - so we started on the
backroads and finished up by taking I-95 up to Savannah.
The people in Savannah really rolled out the red carpet for us - what an amazing
evening they put together! First, the 47 MINIs got together and drove
"parade style" into the downtown area.
Murray, our local host
from Coastal MINIs, arranged a
route that showed off the best parts of downtown Savannah. This is a truly
elegant town! Then we parked our cars in front of
Leopolds Ice Cream (they
had the police close off the entire block in front of the store just for us).
BTW - the owner is Stratton Leopold, a
Hollywood producer - I'm told he flew
back from Hollywood just for this event - and will return to Hollywood
afterwards to continue producing the new Star Trek movie for Paramount Pictures.
How cool is that? J
See my pictures page for all my pics from the day...
Click here to return to the main page