Lex­ing­ton, VA to Ruther­ford, NJ. 400 miles of the Eisen­hower Inter­state Sys­tem. A long day made to seem longer by the con­stant rain. For­tu­nately traf­fic was light except for around Allen­town, PA on I-78 and about 5 miles of the Gar­den State Park­way.

Ruther­ford, NJ to New Britain, CT. Easy drive of about 150 miles and one we used to do often when we lived in New Jer­sey. New Britain is home for my fam­ily and we used to try and get back there every cou­ple of months. Sur­prise, it rained the whole trip. Hertz is going to have to replace the wind­shield wipers on the car if this keeps up. My brother Paul played chef and grilled up some deli­cious ribs for din­ner. Mom whipped up a big ol’ bowl of pasta salad and Donna “tossed” together a Cae­sars salad to go with the corn on the cob. Sis­ter Diane, her hus­band Allen and I did our part by stay­ing out of the way and then eat­ing it all up with smiles on our faces. Fit­ting Labor Day Feast for the tra­di­tional last-day-of-summer.

It was spritz­ing lightly as we started out for our morn­ing drive, so only Rudy had his top down. When we stopped at the Cross­roads of Time for a cou­ple of folks to gas up, every­one else put their tops down for the run through the gap. If you have ever owned a con­vert­ible, you know that in a light rain as long as you can keep mov­ing you stay dry, we used this prin­ci­ple through­out the day. The tops did go up a cou­ple times dur­ing extended stops. With the roads mostly wet it kept our speed down through the gap, which in a way was a good thing, as I got to study the turns instead of just react­ing to them. About 3/4 way through the Honda S2000s started pass­ing by in the oppo­site direc­tion. There was a group of 50 or so from all over the coun­try in town to do what we were doing, drive the gap. When we got to the gravel lot at the end there were still a few of them there. We chat­ted a bit with a cou­ple. Saw one that I’m going to get when I win the lot­tery, light blue metal­lic exte­rior with a dark blue leather interior.…sweet.

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More rain dodg­ing on the return trip. We left early and it was rain­ing so we put the top down after fill­ing up with gas. The top was way wet from sit­ting out overnight, so I tried to dry it as best I could before putting it down. See­ing as I was fill­ing up with gas, I thought that I could try using the window-washing squeegee. I tried it and while it got a lot of the water off, because of the peb­ble grain on the vinyl it left a lot behind. To get as much of the left over water I used those blue tow­els they keep right there. While not com­pletely dry, it was good enough for now. When we stopped to put the top up at a later time I noticed that there was lots of light blue fuzz all over the top. I guess those lit­tle tow­els are not lint-free.

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The car is way filthy from dri­ving around in the rain all week­end. I couldn’t wash it because Donna needed it to go swim­ming. Busy after work week, so it may be all the way until Fri­day before it gets washed. Ordered the 2 rub­ber shift boots that go on the trans­mis­sion under the leather boot you see. When I installed the leather a few weeks back I noticed that the top one had a big tear in it. I didn’t place too much empha­sis on it until I was lurk­ing over on the Miata.net Forum and dis­cov­ered that those torn boots would lead to extra heat in the cock­pit. It was then that I put 2 and 2 together. The trans­mis­sion has been radi­at­ing heat for a while now, I just thought it always did that. Now I think that after read­ing the pro­ce­dure for chang­ing these boots I will have to move up the pur­chase of the short shifter kit so I don’t have to do the job twice and poten­tially pay for the bot­tom boot twice.

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Washed the car this after­noon even though it is sup­posed to rain tomor­row. It was just too filthy not to. It was cov­ered in an even coat of gray, except where I had placed the lit­tle Road­ster­Chat & Master’s Miata Club mag­nets, it was per­fectly clean under them.

Ordered the short shifter kit from Moss. They are proud of their Ship­ping and Han­dling depart­ment — $15 to UPS that 2 lb. shifter.…

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Made it to work with it down, but put it up. It did rain for most of the day, thereby negat­ing the wash job, but what did I expect. Got an email from Moss Motors, the short shifter kit is on back­o­rder and they don’t have an ETA on the next ship­ment, so they can­celled my order. I think that it is a good thing. I read some of the reviews on Miata.net and now am slightly con­fused as to which way to go. The Brain­storm one sounds like the right one except for the dis­claimer on their site about let­ting in more trans­mis­sion noise. Shift boots came today, guess I’ll just put them on this week­end as the research continues.…

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Put the top down for the trip to work, but almost didn’t make it. After we came back out of the bagel place it was sprin­kling. Got going in a hurry and for a sec­ond there it came down hard enough for us to con­sider find­ing a place to put it up. Passed out of the rain and by the time we got to work it had stopped, so we threw on the cock­pit cover. Keep in mind the weather chan­nel insisted that the only chance of rain was a 30% after­noon vari­ety. We dis­cov­ered on the 10:00 walk around the park­ing lot that some­time dur­ing the morn­ing it rained enough to really wet the pave­ment. The cock­pit cover worked won­ders this time, the inside stayed totally dry. The top went up this after­noon because Donna went swim­ming by her­self and the clouds still looked ugly. This evening the skies cleared up enough that we went back out for a drive under the nearly full moon.

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The lit­tle dark blue swirls are not as notice­able nor as plen­ti­ful as I first imag­ined, chang­ing my course of action from hurry and clean/re-wax to “watch­ful wait­ing.” I mean if this was harm­ful in a per­ma­nent way they still wouldn’t be sell­ing this stuff. While I was doing Miata stuff yes­ter­day I also replaced the two (upper & lower) shift boots. Both of them were bro­ken and cracked hor­ri­bly. I guess there is less cock­pit heat.… While I was in there I notice the oil in the tur­ret was brown and very thin. I guess it is time to change that out. I think that maybe I will buy a cou­ple of quarts and go ahead and change all of the trans­mis­sion fluid while I’m at it. Maybe next Saturday’s project.

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The front office folks (with a few excep­tions) are assigned to either Group A or Group B and every other week (exclud­ing weeks in which there is a hol­i­day) a group works an extra hour on Mon­day through Thurs­day and then gets the Fri­day after­noon off. The com­pany started this pro­gram dur­ing the sum­mer and we didn’t do it. Maybe because we out of vaca­tion time for the year is why we jumped on the band­wagon now. Today was day one of the extra hour and it didn’t seem too long. We got up 15 min­utes ear­lier with thoughts of speed­ing some morn­ing rou­tines to make up for the other 15. We were so well oiled that we actu­ally started the com­mute 15 min­utes before we planned. So we took an extra long drive in. As a bonus we were so early that the school busses weren’t out and about yet.

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The mouth of the car has looked kind of naked since I pulled the Alley Gator teeth off, so last week I ordered a dif­fer­ent style set of teeth to put back in there. My wife said she would pay for them if I let her pick the style. Our Wab­bit Teeth arrived at work today. When the mail clerk brought the pack­age to me it was so messed up that I thought for sure the teeth would be in pieces. They ship them in one of those tri­an­gle shaped express mail tubes from the USPS and it must have got­ten wet, let­ting the weight of other mail bags squish and man­gle it, but the teeth are made of sturdy stuff and were just fine. Of course the first thing I did on arrival home is put them on. It is going to take some get­ting used to this style, right now I think they are a lit­tle funny look­ing. I know what you’re think­ing, any kind of teeth on a car look funny! Even if they are sup­posed to look like alli­ga­tor teeth.

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Well tomor­row we will reap the rewards of work­ing an extra hour each day this week, 1/2 day off. We are going to go to Out­back for lunch, because it is my birth­day and that’s where I wanted to go. I’m going to get a Bloom­ing Onion, mmmm, and a big ol’ slab of kan­ga­roo, grilled to perfection.…

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Finally got around to repair­ing my 3rd brake light. On the last Master’s Miata Club run, the per­son fol­low­ing me told me it was dead. As it was twice before it was the wire break­ing right near the trunk hinge. Next time it dies it might just stay dead.

Made it to Out­back for my birth­day “lunch” this evening. Did you know they don’t serve kan­ga­roo steaks? I ain’t never going back there.

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