Driving a car in New York City can be nerve-wracking for residents. Driving around midtown Manhattan in traffic, at rush hour, in your employer's 27-foot-long hot dog seems like an anxiety attack waiting to happen.

But late one afternoon last week, "Smokey" Steph Corte calmly piloted the Wienermobile around pedestrians, buses, and wobbly Citibikers, all while keeping up a patter of Oscar Mayer-approved puns. The handful of BA staffers who had volunteered (okay, jumped up and down) for a Wienermobile ride had all been asked to fasten our "meatbelts" at the beginning of the trip, and were told that our hosts "relished" the opportunity to give us a lift. We asked whether Steph and her copilot, Kacee "Con Queso" Robbins, ever had to camp out in the Wienermobile while on the road, and were gleefully told that the giant hot dog was not a "Wienie-bago" (the pair stays in hotels every night). Describing the admissions process that both drivers had gone through to join the ranks of the Hotdoggers (the official name for Wienermobile drivers), Kacee concluded: "We're the lucky dogs who cut the mustard!"

Every year, a dozen Hotdoggers drive six Wienermobiles around the country, and each almost-identical giant hot dog van (the fleet gets updated in waves; the newest models are 2012s, but 2009s are still on the road) is assigned to a particular region. According to Oscar Mayer, thousands of recent college graduates apply to be Hotdoggers, giving it a lower acceptance rate than Princeton, Harvard, or Yale. This has been going on for 26 years, and Hotdogger alumni occasionally meet for reunions, to reminisce about days on the road and intone puns of yore.

Steph had deferred her acceptance to law school for a year to become a Hotdogger. Kacee hoped to get a job in PR or marketing, a natural next step for someone spending a year enthusiastically driving a corporate mascot around America. In years past, the task of a Hotdogger team was to drive their Wienermobile to supermarket parking lots, local sports games, and the occasional birthday party or wedding, per a schedule set in Oscar Mayer HQ, in Madison, WI. But this year, for a promotion called the Wienermobile Run , the Hotdoggers have gone social.

Each Wienermobile has a name and a theme (ours was "Hell on Buns "), civilians can officially join a Hotdogger team online, and teams compete for points based on social media hashtag volume (#hellonbuns ) and completing fan-submitted "challenges." The Wienermobile run only began on July 8, so the challenges available so far are all Oscar Mayer-generated ("Join motorcycle fanatics and participate in a motorcycle rally!" "Play cupid for the day and capture a romantic event"), but anyone can, theoretically, challenge the Wienermobile to chauffeur them around town, or show up in their office parking lot and prankishly block in a coworker's car. When one of the teams wins at the end of the summer, people who have "joined" that team online all get a special T-shirt, and one fan gets the chance to drive the Wienermobile around, themselves, for a day.

On paper, it seems unlikely that a giant hot dog car could inspire that kind of devotion, from both its drivers (employees or no) and the populace at large. But the Wienermobile might be America's only instantly recognizable vehicular celebrity--it's like if Tom Hanks just drove around town waving from a convertible, and also had a catchy jingle that everyone had grown up singing. There wasn't a stretch during our slow circuits around midtown when someone wasn't pointing a camera at us. Cops waved and came over, and a cop on a horse had, according to one of the Hotdoggers, helped the Wienermobile out of a bad traffic jam the day before.

One man, well-dressed and in his late 20s, came out into the middle of the street to yell "Wienermobile!" in the window, and got a Wienie Whistle for his efforts. (The Wienermobile, despite starting as a vending truck in the 1930s, does not actually carry tubesteak on board. This often disappoints passersby, but the gift of a Wienie Whistle, which can play three notes and is shaped like the vehicle, typically cheers them back up.) We asked if we could stop at a sidewalk hot dog cart to get a frank of our own, but were told that we were only allowed if the cart was selling Oscar Mayer brand hot dogs. After a few blocks of nothing but Sabrett's, we gave up the hunt. Actually eating a weenie would have to wait until our ride inside one was done.

This current crop of Hotdoggers only started Hotdogging in June, after a 40-hour training session at "hot dog high," but for Robin Gelfenbein , driving the Wienermobile has turned into a lifelong journey. Her one-woman play (and upcoming memoir), My Salvation Has a First Name , was based on her experience as on the Hot Dog Highway in the early '90s. "I had a hard time in college," she told us over the phone. "I had lost the sense of who I was, and the idea of driving the Wienermobile inspired me to tap into my true creativity. I went bonkers." To try to set herself apart from the competition, she came up with a mixtape of her own Robin-, hot dog-, and holiday-themed jingles, "Rockin' Robin's Hot Dog Holiday Favorites," and, when she realized during her interview that the head of the program hadn't listened to the tape, went into an a cappella rendition on the spot.

"It just screams fun," she said, when we asked what the basic appeal of the job was. "Everything about it really spoke to me: the fact that you could be on camera, being their spokesperson, getting to meet new people every day, and having a chance to travel all over, and do these fun events." And besides having to deal with a surfer dude copilot more focused on meeting women than marketing goals, a 1960s-vintage Wienermobile with no heat (all Hotdoggers drive through winter), and the occasional off-schedule departure, Gelfenbien's stint went surprisingly smoothly.

"The Wienermobile tends to attract a very structured overachiever type, like me," she said. "They're handing over the keys to these kids who are just getting out of college, and representing the brand. Which is why they GRILL you so much." True to her roots, she could not resist the pun.

This summer's Hotdoggers don't have quite the same freedom as in Gelfenbien's era, with a GPS and maintenance data stream going back to Oscar Mayer HQ at all times, but it's still a high-pressure position. Kacee and Steph were resolutely upbeat, even after a day spent guiding their boat through New York and fielding questions from journalists riding "shotbun," and seemed genuinely excited to get into the meat of their journey, riding through the Wienermobile's Southern region (Texas and adjoining states, mostly).

"We need your help!" they both shouted in unison, when a BA staffer asked about the social media competition. And then we disembarked, on a busy street near Bryant Park, out the Wienermobile's one gull-wing door. Kacee and Steph (the only bilingual Hotdogger) needed to get way uptown for a Telemundo interview on the summer's Wienermobile Run promotion. We asked Steph if there were as many hot dog puns in Spanish. For the first time, the Hotdoggers seemed a little stumped.

But as we said our goodbyes, they bounced back pretty quickly. "Franks a lot!" they said, after reminding us to join their team online, and hashtag them on Instagram, and before sealing the Wienermobile back up and heading uptown, into the bunset.

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