Didn’t post last night, not because the wire­less con­nec­tion was crap in my room like last week, it was fine because we were home, but because it was such a full day and we got home too late to blog about it.

In the morn­ing Donna and I went on a drive to pho­to­graph a half dozen Post Offices. In one I had to use the Emperor’s Mini Me because it was inside a build­ing with no out­side indi­ca­tion it was a PO and another that will have to be re shot on another trip that way because there were too many peo­ple in lawn chairs in front wait­ing for a parade.

True to the Postmaster’s let­ter the Post Office in Hilda was inside a car garage store. There was lit­tle sec­tion just inside the front door on the left that was set aside for that offi­cial func­tion. If you look towards the bot­tom of the photo right next to a fuel fil­ter is the Match­box Gar­net Red Miata. The other side was the cashier for the garage. Coin­ci­dently when we pulled up there was a white 1st Gen Miata just out­side one of the garage doors with it’s hood up being worked on.

When we entered the town lim­its of Ehrhardt, SC the town sign said “Home of the Schuet­zen­fest.” I won­dered to my self what that might be and when they held it. The answer to the sec­ond ques­tion was answered when we got to the inter­sec­tion of US601 & SC64. There were peo­ple every­where. The road was not blocked yet, but you could tell that peo­ple were stak­ing out spots to watch a parade. The Schuet­zen­fest was today. How lucky could we be? Well, not so lucky, the Post Office was nowhere near the south end of town where the Google map thought it should be. We parked the car on a par­al­lel street to the parade route and did a walk through. Found the PO and it was 100 feet from the cen­ter of all the action. This photo would have to wait for another day. The answer to the sec­ond ques­tion had to wait until we got home and checked Wikipedia. Leave it to South Car­olina to mis­spell it and homog­e­nize it to look like another “fes­ti­val” with blow-up kids enter­tain­ment thin­gies, crafts for sale and deep fried dough.

When we got home we had some lunch and I went out­side to wash the car for a cou­ple of Miata events for that after­noon & evening. First up was the annual Sno-Cap Drive-In Anniver­sary hang out in the park­ing lot. Donna stayed home from this one as it was hot as the dick­ens and there is lit­tle place to hide from it over there, plus it is just a bunch of cars with a bunch of car guys stand­ing around talk­ing about cars. On the way over I found out how it looks to have a water­fall cas­cade over the wind­shield header. It looked a lit­tle hazy ahead and I didn’t didn’t see any oncom­ing cars with wipers on, so it couldn’t be rain. Wrong oh. It was a pop up thun­der­shower and it hap­pened so fast I had no time to pre­pare. Most times if you hit a shower and it is not too heavy the best defense is to roll up the win­dows and keep mov­ing. This was no one of those times. Trav­el­ing at 60 MPH in a del­uge just results in there being enough water and force behind it to make it come rolling over the wind­shield. After about a minute or so it was safe to pull over so I could get the top up, of course I had the boot on which just caused more of a delay in get­ting every thing closed up. The inte­rior and myself were soaked. Almost turned around and went home, but see­ing as I was halfway to the Cap I went any­way. About 2 miles later the storm was gone and the skies were blue so I dropped the top again hop­ing the sun would help dry every­thing out. Five miles later when I got to the Drive-In the only way to tell I had got­ten drenched was the pud­dle of water sur­round­ing the shift boot and the damp side of my cloth­ing that I was sit­ting on. The whole hour and a half I was at the Sno-Cap it didn’t rain a drop, but wouldn’t you know it, a cou­ple miles into the drive home it started to rain again and it kept it up for the rest of the trip. This time I was ready, I put the top up before I even left the Cap’s park­ing lot.

I had just enough time when I got home to dry off the recently washed car and lis­ten to 4 innings of the FRS whoop up on the Chicago White Sox before head­ing back out the door for the MMC’s Bug Splat Rally which I run. We had a good turn out (for our lit­tle club) with 9 cars at the restau­rant. Eight of which went on the run. The bugs were not so coop­er­a­tive though, there were a lot of clean Miata noses at the Dairy Queen fin­ish. There were a few large splats, but the biggest bug tro­phy went to a car that came back with a large mos­quito plas­tered near their turn sig­nal. The high­light for us was the medium M&M Bliz­zard we split.

This morn­ing we went out and did a 13 mile ride on the tan­dem, the first 50 feet my butt protested the return of the bicy­cles seat so soon after Friday’s ride, but I showed it who was the boss by con­tin­u­ing on. In truth that was partly the rea­son we did go for a ride today, because all we have been doing is short and very infre­quent rides the lim­it­ing fac­tor in our enjoy­ment is uncom­fort­able sit­ting. Most peo­ple who start bike rid­ing as an adult think that the rea­son their hiney hurts is they need a wider, cushier trac­tor seat, but what they really need is miles. I don’t know what really hap­pens, but it is like form­ing cal­louses on your hands from doing man­ual labor. If you are sit­ting cor­rectly on a mod­ern lightly padded skinny seat after a while of rid­ing your sit bones won’t bother you even on very long rides.

After rid­ing we did our weekly gro­cery shop­ping and were home and in the house for good by 10:30 AM.

I was pleas­antly sur­prised by Stranger Than Fic­tion that we watched this after­noon, it would have been per­fect if not for the happy end­ing, I would have given it a 10 out of ten, had it stopped right after the bus acci­dent part.