Autoweek America Adventure: The search begins

I sit in a darkened hotel room near the Oregon coast waters. The noise I hear sounds like a loud industrial air-conditioning unit in a marginal, national hotel chain. It could not be further from that: The constant thrum is the crashing of Pacific Ocean waves on the beach, no more than 200 yards outside the hotel room. A flickering light on the dark horizon looks to be an oil rig, but I won't know that until the sun comes up in an hour and a half or so.

I get ahead of myself. This is the early morning of Day 2 on the Autoweek America Adventure, road rally that started at the LeMay Museum in Tacoma, Wash., and now finds itself in the quaint and charming--especially in the off-tourist season--Newport, Ore. The first day was filled with laughs and challenges, technology and blimp hangars, and to a person everyone had a blast.

The rally, sponsored by Mopar, has 29 teams of two whose job demands that they read well-written clues, solve them, figure out where the next location in the adventure rally/scavenger hunt is going to be and get there in a predetermined amount of time. Oh, and along the way you must engage with social media--videos and still photos--to let the world know what's going on and where. There's a Web site that allows you all to follow along, and the technology--even in these barren Pacific Northwest woods--tracks our progress. Or at least that's how it's supposed to happen . . .

I'm impressed with the technology that's come to bear on this situation. We were asked to bring a smartphone with a Flickr account, a YouTube account and a Microsoft Tag scanner. It was strongly suggested that we also have a laptop, an iPad tablet and our wiles. For some that meant bandoliers of radar detectors and a pound of Pemmican. (I actually got two pounds at a Super Kmart in Tacoma.)

Right out of the chute the first mission seemed a bit, ahem, out of the ordinary. In riddle form it told us that we were looking for a steel feather on the southwest corner of a town about eight miles from our launch. Of course, we only had so many minutes to get us there. Oh, and once there, we had to make a happy snap with a digital camera, also part of the tech entourage.

With that out of the way it was time for a longer stretch--out toward Mount Rainier where we would find an art sculpture garden and a hedgerow maze in which there would be clues. It was an hour and a half away, but do not get there too soon!

The Autonet technology, the mobile Internet router that was helping to track us and give us digital strength, is cool. Not only will it let you surf the Web from inside the car--this is what co-pilots are for, thank you--but each unit also was tuned by the shop. It is a digital narc and uses the GPS to determine where the cars are at any given moment. That's good if you're trying to follow along on a Web site map and it's good for the organizers: They can tell when you're speeding--which is definitely not the point of this game--and can deduct points. The good news is that they've set the speedo for 5 mph over the local posted limits before the unit sends them a text message that you've been a naughty boy or girl.

For team @11_HoneyBadger (follow us on Twitter!) we picked the "good" clue envelope from the garden maze as our route took us along Highway 101 and down the Washington and Oregon coasts. See, from this garden four different routes spread the teams in four directions; Graham Rahal got a chance to see Portland traffic firsthand.

Our route was sprinkled with a Star Wars toy store where we had to "fight" Luke Skywalker in a light-saber duel and get a picture of it as we wore our Darth Vader helmet, to going to a curio shop where the skeleton of "Jake the Alligator Boy" lorded over the knickknacks, trash and trinkets, to touring the world's largest wooden structure--a blimp hangar in Tillamook, Ore., that at one time housed full-size lighter-than-air vehicles.

It was an awesome day, and its exclamation mark was a bonfire on the beach overlooking the mighty Pacific Ocean. And to think, there are five more great days like this ahead before we hit Vegas, baby!

Stay tuned, and follow us on all of the various social-media outlets, even though Honey Badger Don't Care!

Look for us at:

-- @11_HoneyBadger

-- @Autoweek Racing

-- Facebook

-- Autoweek America Adventure.

By Dutch Mandel