Hobbit's whirlwind east coast tour

It is my long-standing tradition to visit my parents around
the holidays. At this point they live near-ish the Tampa
FL area, and now that my first round of mods on the Prius
is nicely buttoned up and ready for winter, that the right
way to do the journey is to avoid the TSA cavity-searches
and make it a ROAD TRIP!
.
So the idea here is a leisurely wander down the East Coast,
possibly starting around 8-Dec and spending that following
weekend in Philly at a convention, and then continuing to
head south. I would love to meet up with some of my newfound
Prius buddies on the way, sometime during that week between
12-Dec and 16-Dec, to get together, geek about mods, compare
notes, chat about energy issues in general, consume food and
drink, or what have you. This may be a nice excuse for us
to spawn a series of mini-gatherings along the way, and I'm
willing to wander across a fairly wide swath of territory to
reach where people are. For instance, I wouldn't mind finally
seeing places like the Blue Ridge parkway, if it's still open
at that time of year, or try optimizing my driving technique
in those fabled West Virginia mountains. The trip can become
a nice mix of higher-mileage, scenic secondary roads and
straight shots down 95 or other interstates.
.
I'm not particularly seeking accomodations from people, just
brief visits, gatherings, tours, or whatever to associate a few
faces and vehicles with the names I see go by on my screen!
This is as much of an event as y'all want to make it -- I'm
doing the trip anyways, and am willing to change course for
social entertainment and be in no tearing hurry to get there.
The return trip, sometime after xmas, is also a possibility
although I'll probably be feeling a little more pressure to
get back up north by then.
.
Your choice on how to respond. I am preferentially reached
as "hobbit" at my home domain avian.org, or if that bounces
due to spam filters try techno-fandom.org or PM me here. Or
just begin coordinating things in the forum...
.
_H*

 

[bump!]
.
Plans are solidifying somewhat. The convention in Philadelphia is
definite, which would put us [yes, two people] on the road south /
west from there on the afternoon of Sunday 11-Dec and aimed in the
general direction of Front Royal VA and Skyline Drive. What happens
from there depends on people, weather, time, and various other
factors and it's all fairly loose and unhurried.
.
Besides various mountains, if there are opportunities for gatherings
or onesey-twosey meetings and mod-geeking anywhere between there and
Florida, I'd love to hear about it!
.
_H*

 

It's been pretty fun so far. We've landed, somewhat by chance, in
the little nowheresville of Grundy VA, near the Kentucky border.
Today was spent tooling around lots of backroads, including an
attempt at getting up one of the icier segments of the Blue Ridge
parkway but eventually being turned back by a slick sheet upon which
it was completely impossible to move forward/upward and rather
tricky to back down without the front end swinging around into the
ditch. We got out of there okay and went over many lower mountains.
Really brings home why some people want extended battery packs to
capture those long hills' worth of regen. Averaging about 53 mpg
in mixed interstate and 45-55 mph secondary highways, mostly, with
ambient temps around 25 - 40 F.
.
Met up with a few folks so far, and have one more waypoint with
someone in Chattanooga tomorrow before the long final bust for
South Florida on Thursday.
.
_H*

 

Tiny update: made it to FL on the 16th, and in various running
around locally I spotted *no* other Priuses for several days and
then all of a sudden over the last day and a half, there were
two classics and 3 or 4 3rd-gens running around. Weird.
.
So here I am in the Venice FL area, and woefully behind on PC.
Still up for meetups and mod-comparisons. The funniest thing today
was hearing my dad reel off a bunch of Prius info to someone *else*
over dinner, demonstrating that he had absorbed *my* ranting...
.
_H*

 

My trip back will begin sometime after the 25th, and I expect will
be somewhat governed by weather and how many waypoints will pop up
between here and there. I would say that from the 28th on would be
a safe bet, or is that too late in the month? I wanna be back home
before new years, so it would be sometime that last week in Dec..
.
_H*

 

We took many pix, but this one struck me as uniquely cool:
http://techno-fandom.org/~hobbit/pix/prius-cliff.jpg
.
_H*

 

Okie dokie, starting to check the weather for next week. Looks
pretty nice all the way up to Thursday, in fact, all the way north.
Turns out I'm skipping a leg through Myrtle Beach, so I could likely
reach the RTP area that much sooner. That's about 11 hours from
where I am at best route/speed, i.e. up 95 [ick]. I've still got
this yen to maybe drop in on Coastal Dave and noodle some secondary
roads to avoid bits of 95, so it might be prudent to split that into
2 days and arrange to arrive in RTP some midweek-ish late afternoon.
.
So what day would be best for the RTP folks? I'm reasonably flexible
down here but I'd rather stick around over Monday. I would hazard
a guess at depart here Wed. morning, arrive RTP Thurs. evening, but
that could certainly shift a day either way.
.
_H*

 

That would work fine... all I'd need is to know where to go [addr,
lat/long coordinates, whatever] and maybe a contact number or two
[in case I meet impediments] that you could PM me or email to my
home addr..
.
Thanks for putting up with my randomness; hopefully we can pull
together a good one and I might have a few nice li'l xmas presents
to hand out...
.
_H*

 

So, on my way out of FL I dropped in on Coastal Dave. Or tried
to. Found the house easily enough; rather than spew details I'll
just point out that anyone can look up acei.us themselves and
consult a map. There was a silver Classic in the driveway along
with an odd-looking angular golf-cartish thing that's probably
some EV experiment, so I figured it was the right place. So I
grabbed my envelope full of doc and went up and rang, and a
woman answered the door. Perhaps it was Kelly, do not know...
.
Me: hi! I'm here to see if Coastal Dave wanted to chat about
cars and related stuff?
.
Her: *shrug*
.
Me: er ... I hope I have the right place ... I'm Hobbit from
priusonline/priuschat/whatever, and I figured if Dave's here
he might want to talk some tech.
.
Her: *shrug* [no indication if I'm even barking up the right
tree]
.
Me: um ... do I have the right place? Is there a Dave here
who does electronics for the Prius?
.
Her: *shrug*, with a little more of a downturned lip strongly
implying "i really don't want to deal with you"
.
Me: okay, well, if I do have the right place and Dave doesn't
want to come out then please just give him this [handing her
the standard URL flyer] and sorry to bother you.
.
And I left. Left the island, left the state, and it took until
well into Georgia to get my utter bewilderment under control.
I was completely dumbfounded by this response. Along comes
someone with a common interest and a genuine desire to help
understand Dave's relationship with the community, and I get
completely blown off without even a chance to talk about any
of it rationally. Yeah, that's real sweet public-relations work.
.
Dave/Kelly, if you're reading this, please understand that my
intentions were to simply inquire and discuss, at your listed
place of business, and the absolute *minimum* of professional
courtesy would have been to at least give some reason for that
level of stonewalling. Honestly, if that's the way you have
decided to treat a community that still occasionally tries to
reach out to you, then I would say that your Prius days are done.
.
_H*

 

By your logic, every canvasser, JW, and kids selling magazines
for school would be shot. Please give me a little credit for
knowing how to inoffensively knock on a door and ask an honest
question. Hell, I wasn't even asking for money.
.
You've been around long enough to know what the issues with this
guy are, and that phonecalls would likely receive a similar
response. I was trying a different tack.
.
_H*