What the...?

Why am I awake and blogging at 5:36, you ask? Well, I'll tell you.

Most of you know by now that I own a MINI Cooper. I love that car. It loves me. We're happy together :) We like to spend time "motoring" (it's a MINI thing).

Well, MINIUSA.com started a photo Scavenger Hunt about a month or so ago. You wake up on Tuesdays at 4:00 a.m. (EST), check the Owner's Lounge page for the week's mission and go take a photo of your car in front of said target. [For example, this week you had to go find an old-fashioned barber shop with the spinning candy-stripe pole.] You get ranked by the time that it takes you from when the mission was released until you can get home and upload your photo to the site. The person with the lowest elapsed time wins a 6-day trip to MINI United in Italy (it's a big rally for MINIs, naturally).

So, being the lunatic I am, I'm participating in this "hunt." I'm actually doing quite well in the rankings. I'm in 9th place overall, out of hundreds, with the potential of being in 6th place. Some folks ahead of me had questionable photos this week (i.e. no visible pole, pole painted on sign/building, etc.) Being that I live in the near-200-year-old town of Westerville, Ohio, this was not difficult to find.

The thing is, I get this incredible adrenaline rush when my phone alarm goes off and it doesn't go away easily. Especially when I come home and realize that I could possibly have moved up in the ranking. My heart is pumping and my stomach is flippy. I mean, hey, I WANT TO GO TO ITALY. GOSH!