20TH ANNIVERSARY SANDLOT TOUR - 4.07.2013 - DAY 1

Dear Reader,

I'm going to post at the end of each day, or following morning (such as this post), with perhaps some gaps in-between when the time between screening events is more than a week.

And just as a side-bar, I looked up the World Record for audience size at a single film screening.  It's something like 28,442 and it was set in 2012.

Well, I've heard rumors that we might exceed that number at one of the stadiums we're going to screen in.

Got a bit of a late start out of Florida heading for Memphis, TN to pick up some Sandlot merchandise from a good friend of mine who lives there.  He's been holding it for me since we did a test-run screening at Autozone Park last October.

Chief of Security, Captain Maverick Vom Evans, and Navigator Stacey were right on time and eager to go.  So we loaded the Tour Truckster, hit the gas station for petrol and tire air, stuck the new SunPass sensor to the windshield (Ha! No more stopping at toll booths!) and headed south on I-4 to 408 West to 75 North.

The destination for the day was Morrow, GA, about 20 miles south of Atlanta.  Thereby breaking the 800 odd miles to Memphis into two more palatable chucks of driving.

A quick primer: Florida drivers?  A-holes.  They've a particular penchant for cutting you off at 80 mph with no turn signal and 14 inch to spare.  I like to call this the Spontaneous Non-Indicative Lane Change.  I wish that added up to a cool acronym but it doesn't.

Georgie drivers?  Speedy A-holes.  Not so much with the potentially murderous lane changing, but dude, seriously, do you have to crawl up my tail pipe when I'm already doing 80 in a 70 zone?  I swear not one of them was going less than 90 mph.  The nice thing about it is, that apparently the State of Georgia knows all about this, and so, have deployed stealth State Trooper cars with some sort of new cloaking device.  May like ten times in 4 hours some frickin' Nascar wannabe would rip by me and out of sight, only to reappear moments later having been pulled over by the a GST.  Out of nowhere - the trooper just appeared.  Awesome.

Otherwise all was well, just a bit of slog 6 plus hours OTR dodging idiots.

But I'll tell you what, you meet the nicest people at state rest stops.  And most of them have dogs, like Maverick.  Well, okay, not at all like Maverick, but they are of the canid species.

Captain Maverick is a hit everywhere he makes an appearance.  First question out of every little kid's mouth: "Can I pet your German Shepherd?"  First words out of every adult's mouth: "Is he a police dog?"

It's currently 8:35 Am 4.08.2013 - so I gotta hit the road.  Here's a quick photo of the size of Maverick's paws.  I don't know why.  I just thought it was freakin' amazing.  And a series of pix from the first leg of the drive to Memphis.

Captina Maverick's Paw. X-Large

Captain Maverick in his command center

The Tour Truckster

At a rest stop in Georigia

Gerogia rest stop

Captain Maverick's favorite sign!!!

A little sign from the Man Upstairs - a good omen

Where the tour begins and ends for we 3 travellers

What the HELL did we do before GPS?!

Check back tomorrow.

Best  DME