Soooo… its been a while. I’ve decided to break all this crazy up into little chunks in order to make it manageable for anyone reading as well as myself. So in this post I’ll go back and tackle Halloweenie and Hotdogger Challenge weeks.
After Goldsboro, NC, we headed to Gainesville, FL. Gainesville was pretty amazing. Off days were dedicated to planning for Hotdogger Challenge and vegging out. Once the work days started it was all about Halloweenie.
Our decorated Hallowienermobile 
PUMPKIN WIENIE 
The mustard to my ketchup
The night before Halloweenie, we participated in a trunk-or-treat. The Wienermobile of course gave out GLOW IN THE DARK whistles instead of candy and we had the whole inside decorated as a spooky hot dog lair! All the kiddos were running around collecting their candy. At one point, I had like 14 kids inside the Wienermobile with me. It was chaos, but so fun.
The next two days we spent at different Hitchcock’s grocery stores in the area. These stores were amazing. They had bounce houses, a cook out, and all employees were dressed in hot dog suits. Of course I had to join some new friends in the bounce house!
We also made a stop in Jacksonville for the FL/GA tailgate! Yea, thats right. The world’s largest cocktail party. This event was so fun and so stressful all at once. There. Were. So. Many. People. In. One. Place. Many of them running out in front of a MOVING Wienermobile to take pictures. For those of you who haven’t taken physics…. AN OBJECT IN MOTION WILL STAY IN MOTION UNLESS IMPEDED BY ANOTHER FORCE. I can promise you, your body is not a big enough force to impede the Wienermobile’s inertia.
However, we did get to spend a couple hours chucking Wienermobile footballs out of the bunroof to screaming masses which was pretty incredible.
Throwing out footballs 
ALL THE FOOTBALLS 
Tailgating
After we left Gainesville, it was time for the biggest week of the hotdogger year…. HOTDOGGER CHALLENGE WEEK. Hotdogger challenge week is the ultimate week where a hotdogging pair gets to show what they’re made of. At the end of the week, we have some time to compile a report for our bosses, and come January, only one team reigns supreme as TOP DOG. Our current boss was Top Dog and all Troy and I could hope for was that one day we might be Top Dogs too. So we got to work.
Normally, our weeks are scheduled by our boss Angela. She tells us where to go, and we arrange all the details and go there. But Hotdogger Challenge Week is different. You get a city, and thats it. The rest is up to you. We spent the week prior to Challenge Week throwing out ideas, lining up events, discussing plans with our bosses, shooting down ideas, coming up with better ones, and calling contacts. By the time we rolled into Augusta on Monday, we were ready.
We started off by printing of tons of flyers with our events. We went around Augusta posting flyers everywhere we went. If you went to a store? You were gonna know we were there. Next we hit up the media. We landed two TV interviews, radio interviews, and a newspaper article by driving up to places and sitting outside until someone noticed us. I also had some friends in the TV industry (shout out to Jersey Mike), so that helped too. If you lived in Augusta… you would have heard about us. Next we scheduled a full day of private events (gave the media time to keep sharing the story with the public), and then the rest of the week we had our public events! This was what our week looked like:
Wednesday: we started off the day trying the Popeye’s chicken sandwich (better than chickfila TBH, but not worth it bc the service is so bad). Then we did our first round of King of the Grill. Similar to cash cab, King of the Grill is a video game show that Troy and I came up with! We surprise people with a ride in the Wienermobile and then once they get in, we tell them its so much more than that. Instead of just riding around, they are about to compete for Wienermobilia by answering Wienermobile trivia questions! Troy and I filmed all our rides and created a video using our favorite footage for our final report. If you’re interested, here is the link to watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVANupi2FIQ&feature=youtu.be
When we were done with King of the Grill, we went and participated in a special needs golf clinic. Every kid participating got a whistle, sticker, and chance to sit inside a Wienermobile seat! Finally, we headed back to our hotel for our final event: A cookout! We provided 100 Oscar Mayer Hot Dogs to the hotel for cooking and opened up the Wienermobile for guests. All of the hot dogs were gone before we even got back, so I guess that means it was a success.
Thursday: We started the day off with more King of the Grill, then headed to the Children’s Hospital of Augusta. This event was incredible. Not only did countless children make their way down to see the Wienermobile despite IVs and other obstacles, but the Wienermobile brightened the day of staff, family, and visitors. We had coloring out, which ended up being great because the kids could take coloring sheets back up to their rooms. Soon after the hospital event, we headed to Pendleton King Park for our first public event! Yay!!! We called it coloring with the Wienermobile (we had bought an absurd amount of craft supplies for this event). Despite the media talking about our events consistently, Troy and I weren’t quite sure if people would show up or not. We were delighted when we pulled into the park 20 minutes early to find a huge crowd waiting for our arrival. Not long after the start of the event, it started to rain on the huge line waiting to see inside the Wienermobile. Rather than leave, they stood in line in the rain and continued to be so grateful for our presence. More news showed up to cover the event. It was honestly incredible to look at the sea of people and know that Troy and I had done all of this by ourselves.
Friday: Our first event Friday was a blast. Troy and I called bingo at the senior center and also provided some Wienermobile prizes! One lady kept winning and started hoarding Wienermobile banks. She had me and Troy laughing. After the game, we took everyone outside to see the 27 foot long hot dog. More media showed up and the event ended with all of us dancing and singing around the Wienermobile.
We then did some more King of the Grill rides followed by a short event at the Augusta fire station! We ended the day at the Harvest on the Hill festival. The festival had bounce houses, food trucks, and live music! It was the perfect family friendly event.
Saturday: In the morning, the Wienermobile made an appearance at the Jacob Cooter Memory run. We cheered on runners and handed out whistles. We even had some groups show up just to see the Wienermobile. The afternoon was spent at an event close to my heart. We attended the National Pet Adoption at PetsMart, which I used to work throughout middle and high school. We had at least 700 people show up to this event. The line to see the inside never died down. While it was pretty overwhelming, it was still so incredible to see a turnout like that at an event you planned. My Grand Big even showed up and surprised me! We got some Starbucks after to decompress.
Monday: Sunday was a well needed off day, but Monday morning we were back at it. Along with King of the Grill, the day was also filled with different post card writing events! People showed up from all over Augusta to write a post card thanking their veterans. After everyone was finished and our event was over, Troy and I dropped the cards off at the local VA and mailed the ones that were specifically addressed.
All in all, it was a pretty incredible week. Here is the link to the recap video Troy put together! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bz6fIWI5Geo&feature=youtu.be
And I’ll also include the link to one of my favorite interviews I’ve done on the road: https://www.wrdw.com/content/news/Its-a-27-foot-hotdog-on-wheels-Oscar-Mayer-Wienermobile-makes-its-trek-to-Augusta-564548921.html
During my off day, I was also able to see meet up with a friend for birthday bunch, some extended family members, and a Wienermobile driver from class 3!
Class 3 Hotdogger 
Jersey Mike! at his birthday brunch
I suppose I’ll go ahead and stick it all in this post. The winners of Hotdogger Challenge Week were announced at our Winter Staff Meeting in January. Troy and I were somehow able to come out on top and win this year’s TOP DOG award. I could not be more proud of our work. Challenge week left me with a lot of new skills and much more confidence in myself and became one of my favorite weeks on the job.
We will end this post there, and I’ll continue to ketchup in the next one 🙂
As always, “franks” for reading and coming to ketchup with me,
Hot Diggity Dot
Hot Dog Dot and the Wienermobile! 