Cheese Head Hustle

Apparently when true cheeseheads travel, they actually take their cheeseheads with them. Tom Cinealis, a member of the Wisconsin-based Badgerland Miata Club, sent me this news from Grapevine, Texas. It’s too entertaining not to share. Here you go – thanks, Tom!

As part of the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Mazda Miata which was held in Texas over the Memorial Day weekend, members of the Wisconsin based Badgerland Miata Club showed the rest of the clubs in attendance a little game called the “Cheese Head Hustle”.

Although they do things big in Texas, Wisconsin let them know that when it comes to cheese, Wisconsin does it bigger and better.

The object of the game was for the passenger of these little two seater cars to retrieve the various types of oversized foam cheeses from their stands and place them on the driver’s head while the driver maneuvers his (or her) Miata through the slalom course. One of the major stumbling blocks for each team was that the contestants must attempt to hold all the cheeses on the driver’s head while maneuvering through the course.

After a signal to go from the starter, the driver races to the first cheese. To get a good base for this “stack and drive” game, the first cheese is obviously going to be a wedge shaped hat of cheddar, not that un-similar to the Cheddar heads of Green Bay Packers fame, only larger.

The other cheeses go on top of the cheddar. However, these foam cheeses, such as a 15” Gouda wedge or a 9” ball of Mozzarella don’t stack very well.

Of course the passenger can be a great asset to the driver while maneuvering through the course, but it’s a little hard to hold numerous cheeses on your partner’s head while reaching half way out of the car — especially when the driver doesn’t get you close enough to grab the two foot long section of Swiss, or a brie the size of a hat box.

Did I mention that once all the cheeses are collected, their total height is well above the normal reach of anyone outside the NBA? So it takes two people to hold this collection of cheeses over the driver’s head, who by the end has usually shrunk down so low in their seat that the view of the course is through the steering wheel.

Once all the cheeses are collected, it’s a race to the finish line in an attempt to make the best time. And best time some of them did. Although the average time was well over a minute and half, several teams came in under 50 seconds, the best being under 43 seconds. Quite a feat since no one outside of Wisconsin has ever seen this game. Of course just to keep it fair, none of the Wisconsin contingent participated — they only officiated.

In the end it didn’t matter if you played the game, watched those that did, or hadn’t even tasted all the real varieties of the cheeses being used, (we did bring a supersized block of Velveeta for the Chili Con Caso eaters for just this reason). Just being in the presence of supersize cheeses from Wisconsin was fun for all.