Our last day at the Scion United event was fairly un-eventful and felt really long. I stayed up late the night before putting the pictures and post up about the event so Kerry woke up before me at around 8am. We got dressed and headed back down to the cafe for another breakfast of sausage egg sandwiches and coffee.
We took a small walking tour around the hotel. They have a botanical garden, beach and doc that we hadn’t seen yet (Kerry took pictures, but I don’t have those pictures yet). So after the short tour, we headed back up to the room to finish our packing, checked out of the hotel and headed down to where our last bus ride was going to take us to our cars. We waited for a short time for our bus to get up front, boarded the bus and … waited.
30 miniutes past, an hour, finally 2 hours of waiting on the bus and we are told we are finally going to go. Turns out, the computer system that the marketing company uses to track everything (including who’s cars are where) was down and it made for a serious mess at the event site. Our bus was held at the hotel because at least there we could use the bathroom in the hotel, get food and drinks from the cafe etc. Some people weren’t happy about it, one pair of guys called a cab to take them to the event site (which was funny, because they only got their car one or two people ahead of me).
My car was parked up in the same area that we had the event in and if rumor has it, my car was in the group that actually got filmed/photographed for the ad campaign. It was covered in a nice healthy coat of dust, but otherwise unscathed. I heard a lot of horror stories about people with massive scratches, dents, dings and general damage but to be honest I didn’t see any of it, so I’m not sure what to believe and what to pass as over-reactions.
I was however, out of gas. I droped the car off with about 240 miles on the odo and a quarter tank of gas. When I picked it up, I still had around 240 miles but was completely out of fuel. I’m still not really sure why they had it idle through a couple gallons of gas. I heard some speculation that they had headlights on or something to that effect for shots, but my drivers side low beam is out so you’d think that puts my car out of the running, or perhaps they just used the high beams.
I was able to make a stop and take some better pictures of the Scion xD “Hot Lava” RS1. I also spent some more time talking to the couple from Pennsylvania. They both have Scion’s, and both scions got picked to attend the event, but they only drove their BSP tC (represent!) because of the prices of gas.
The wheel in the last picture is not the wheel that will come on the RS1 off the lot though. The RS1 will have plastic wheel covers instead which is really lame. Kerry really liked the xD so I think I’m going to have to give Damon (of Elk Grove Scion) a call to see what we’d be into if we traded her aging Passat in on something (probably a used xD if any exist).
On the way out of the event they gave each owner a numbered badge (to be stick on the car I assume). I ended up number 243 out of 500 (I’d be interested to hear from #1 and #500). We left the event site and stopped at the first gas station to fill up on fuel (for both the car and us). I wasn’t paying attention to the pump I drove up to, and it wasn’t until I went to put my card in that I realized this was not an average pump. There must be a race track or drag strip in Boulder, because the gas station had 100 octane gas (for $5.999 per gallon).
After that the trip was fairly un-eventful. It was almost 2:30 by the time we got on the road so we knew we were going to be getting back late. We stopped and had lunch in Primm (a town on the Nevada side of the border with a casino, fashion outlet and some fast food places.
For a while along the way home I trained with a couple of other Scions but eventually they all pulled off onto other highways. We had dinner in Fresno, and finally arrived home a little after midnight.
In all it was an awesome trip and I’m glad that I was invited. I’m still waiting to see the event pictures posted up on Scion’s website. And I’m looking forward to seeing the commercials pop up. So keep your eye’s open for my car on TV in a few months!
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This post is tagged dirt, drive, event, gas, hot lava, rs1, scion, scion united, tc, xd
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