Earlier this year I was contacted by one of Scion's primary marketing firms to partner up on a contest through one of my websites, ScionLife.com. We teamed up to send over 300 ScionLife members on a free weekend to Miami Beach for a special Scion appreciation event.
The adventure started on Thursday when every ScionLife winner, plus 100 more Scion club leaders, press members and Toyota staff, boarded planes from all across the country in the direction of Miami Airport. Most arrived on Thursday evening and hopped on a 25-minute taxi ride to the Loews Hotel on Miami Beach.
The hotel was first-rate. Very classy. I feel sorry for the small percentage of guests that paid retail rates for their rooms while 300 crazy, drunk Scion fanatics roamed the halls. But I get ahead of myself. We checked into our rooms, Troy and Sierra in one, Steve and me in another, and Anna in a third. It was getting late, but not too late to find alcohol There was a liquor store a block away, and after a couple of fifths we decided to head down to the beach. It was midnight, the air was about 75 degrees and the water was about the same. We spent about half-an-hour playing in the ocean, then we headed up to the 24-hour outdoor pool/hottub and chatted it up with other ScionLife members until about 2AM.
Friday morning we headed down to a catered lunch in the hotel banquet hall, where we met more ScionLife members and got some grub in our tummies. After that we walked all around South Beach, which is a small peninsula that sticks off the east side of the city of Miami. It was a little over 80 degrees and humid, occasionally raining. We walked through shopping disctricts, tourist areas and even the occasional slum. While trying to lead the group on a shortcut through a dumpy motel I almost walked straight into a shaved-head, fully-tattooed esé who appeared to be massaging his biceps while standing shirtless in the motel courtyard. A quick 180 degree turn and we continued down the sidewalk on whence we came. Haha.
Later in the evening we got dressed up and headed down to the hotel lobby to board busses taking us to the main event. Less than a half-mile away from the hotel we were dropped off at the Miami Beach Convention Center, where everyone was searched for cameras and cell phones, then allowed into one of the MBCC meeting halls. Inside were several open bars, a sampling of customized Scions scattered around the hall, plus two cars hidden underneath black covers. This is where things start to get fuzzy for me. You see, we had started our drinking many hours earlier, and the presence of free alcohol started to erode my normally-fuzzy memory even more.
I do remember Scion 1, Mark Templin, getting on stage and thanking a bunch of people... including me for running ScionLife and helping to make the contest happen. He also, apparently, thanked Troy Sumitomo of Five Axis. Unfortunately, because Troy, my brother, was standing in front of Troy's Scion FUSE at the moment the thanks went out he thought that Templin was thanking him and raised his hands in the air, only to hear the second part of the thank you, which was for creating and building the FUSE concept car. Oops.
Next Templin handed the Mike over to the surprise guest speaker, Rainn Wilson, who plays the character Dwight Schrute on The Office.
Rainn proceeded to announce some winners of various trophies that Scion had thought up, such as 'hardest to contact' and 'hardest to convince'. The categories were lame, but Rainn was pretty damn funny so it more than made up for it. After he was finished announcing he steped off the stage and was immediately cornered by our own drunk Steve and Willy, who forced him to autograph and write a short note, "Troy, I love you. You big gay guy. Signed Rainn Wilson, Dwight". This note was presented to Troy later that night, and will soon be framed and hanging on his wall at home.
As soon as Rainn was off the stage Mark Templin hopped back up and commanded that the black covers be pulled from the two cars in the back of the room. The new 2008 Scion xB and 2008 Scion xD were sitting before us in all of their sparkly splendor. It was hard to take in many of the details, though, since 300 people were clamoring for a good view. (the alcohol had me pretty severaly impaired at this point, too) The cars were each spinning slowly under floodlights. I don't remember exactly what they looked like, but I do remember being impressed with the designs. I believe that both are going to sell very well, which will help ScionLife grow, so I am happy.
After a short amount of time the covers were thrown back on the cars and another surprise guest came out. The lights went black, music started exploding through the room and Ludacris came out on stage. He performed a one-hour private set for our little group of misfits, which was pretty funny when you stood back and looked at it from a distance. Lets just say that the crowd was most certainly not his usual group. We had a ton of people dancing and jumping around, but as I stated before the alcohol was beginning to inhibit the motor functions of many people and I think we might have looked more like zombies from Shawn of the Dead than Luda fans.
Things are really fuzzy now, but as the event ended we were given back our cameras and phones, herded back onto the shuttle buses and taken to SoBe Live, a night club not far from the hotel. Scion had rented the club for the night and once again drinks were on them. 300+ people were now drinking it up, dancing and chatting away until the wee hours. I remember walking around and shaking hands from a ton of people... the next day I was told that I also hugged many of them as well. Hmmm. I don't remember that, but enough other people did that I guess I will go with it.
After the party we headed back to the hotel... I don't remember much of anything after this point... but I got to sleep around 7AM. We spent most of the next day laying next to the pool and sleeping. Then we flew home Saturday night. It was a crazy trip, not one that I am likely to forget soon... except the parts that I already forgot, I guess. Haha.
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