So Much For Cold Turkey

The miserable bastards pulled it off last night by winning on an Ortiz homer in the bottom of the twelfth. I quit listening in the fourth and went to bed. The way I found out they won was when the weather channel OCM this morning gave me a forecast for game five in Boston. Seeing as they are playing this afternoon, I can’t use the going to bed excuse, so I’m listening to it on Internet radio. Once today’s game is over and they have lost, I’ll be able to forget about this painful period in my life…

My Exciting Day

Went for a walk in the woods this morning. We haven’t been on a hike in Hitchcock Woods in so long I can’t remember when, but finally getting back in there will hopefully get us back on the every weekend Sunday morning hike. It is definitely becoming fall, as the morning was crisp and cool, but not many leaves have changed color, so it still looks very green.

Off to Augusta Regional Airport (Fly Here Fly Home TM) in the MSV to pick up Aunt Mary. She flys direct from Newark to Augusta and vice versa on Continental Express and seeing as they are ceasing operations in Augusta at the end of this month, Mary returned for one last visit while the non-stop flights fly.

This afternoon Donna and I ran some errands and stumbled on a low-key car show in downtown Aiken put on by the Aiken Horsepower Association. We wandered up the street , stopped in for ice cream and then wandered back.

Tonight I’m listening to what could be the last Red Sox game of the year on MLB.com.

Next Time Take the By-Pass

This is our year. We are going to win the World Series. It just wouldn’t mean as much unless we beat the Yankees to get there. The road to the World Series goes through New York.

It is the top of the 5th in game 3 and the Red Sox are losing 13 to 6. They must have taken a wrong turn trying to get through NY. One time twenty-odd years ago I decided to drive through New York City on I-95 on my way back home to Connecticut from Tennessee. Not smart. Somehow I ended up in Coney Island. In trying to correct my error I some how ended up crossing the George Washington Bridge back into NJ. Ever since that fateful night, I have gone way around the Big Apple to the west on my way home to CT. I learned my lesson, apparently the Red Sox have not.

Wash Or Just Dust?

The Miata is kinda dirty because we actually had some rain this last week. The Peachtree Miata Club is coming into town for the weekend, but Donna and I will only be spending a bit of time on Saturday afternoon with them. Should I do the whole wash thing? Or should I just use the Californina Car Duster and some Meguiar’s Quik Detailer ?

I can still sense that the car feels slightly quicker and lighter on it’s feet because of the smaller, lighter wheels and their new rubber. I know my Budget Director might disagree, but I think the swap and money spent was definately worth it…

As my co-worker Brian remarked this afternoon, “The spoiler is still on there.”

You’re Killing Me

I don’t know which is worse, watching the Red Sox lose the first two games of the series to the Yankees or watching it on Fox.

Their announcing crew is hurting my ears. Somebody named Joe or Jack Buck sounds like the most intelligent of the three, but he doesn’t have to go far. Tim McCarver doesn’t seem to be watching the same game as I am, he consistently gets names of the players wrong and is out of step with the action. And Al Leiter is so quiet that the only time you know he is there is when they show him on camera explaining how to throw a certain pitch and for a former pitcher he does that badly. They talk when they sound be quiet and when they should be talking there is silence. We see every pitch four times, first when it happens and three replays including one from a camera buried in the dirt near home plate. Please an important pitch in an important situation, but not every single one. The direction is herky-jerky. It is all over the place and makes MTV jump cuts seem sedate. Whenever they switch to the camera down the first base line the sound jumps 10 decibels louder too. They have a very annoying animated baseball that is used once a game to explain some facet of the game, I think, I turn the sound off. Fox is inserting an extra bit of promoing in between innings, we get back to the game just in time to see the pitcher release his first pitch of the inning. No lead in at all, if a pinch hitter is in or a new pitcher, you don’t know until after the action (if they tell you.)

I know this might not be Fox’s fault (although it probably is) but what is up with the ameriquest blimp? We get some nice aerial shots of the stadium and then they flash a little box telling us that it is coming from the ameriquest blimp with a nice illustration of a red, white & blue blimp. We never see the blimp. I’m betting if it is not a helicopter, and in fact a real blimp, it is not painted that way, but something in plain white hired for the occasion from the ACME Blimp Co. in Lakehurst, NJ.

The Forecast Calls For 4 to 7 Days of Anguish Ahead

I used to have a team I followed closely in each major sport. Almost all were centered in Boston.

The Bruins lost my love when the Hartford Whalers joined the NHL a lot closer to my home, but now the Whalers are gone from there. Moved to somewhere in North Carolina, possibly Charlotte (ironically closer to my now home), but hockey lost its appeal in it’s ever growing expansion into the southern states in search of the dollar. Plus how can you follow a team you can’t see on TV? The Celtics fell on hard times after Larry Bird left, but I hung in for a few more years. The game has changed from one of finesse to one of in-your-face one upmanship and it lost its appeal to me. Same thing with football where self-congratulations of grandiose proportions now occurs after the routine play. I was a LA Rams fan for some reason, not the Patriots as expected and followed them until they moved to St. Louis.

Maybe it was summer evenings listening to the games on the radio while growing up that has made my affection for baseball last. Well, the real baseball playoffs start in just a few minutes. Red Sox – Yankees and I’ll be glued to the tube hoping that this is the year.

How Fast Ya Goin’? *

On the way to Atlanta on Sunday Donna and I were in the middle of the pack, with us, the lead car and the caboose all having CBs. After clearing the Augusta area and getting into the part of the Interstate where there are 10 miles between exits, John in the lead car calls out, “How fast are you going? I’m showing 72 MPH.” To which I replied, “Seventy-five.” Rudy from the back said he was showing 72 as well. John said he would bump the cruise up to 75. After settling in at that speed (the limit is posted as 70) he asked for another check. Once again Rudy was right in line with John at an indicated 75 MPH. My speedo read 80. Why the difference? I’m riding on the same size wheels and have the exact same tire model as John, while Rudy has 17″ wheels & tires. Was my speedometer calibrated differently because my car came from the factory with 16″ wheels while John’s 99 came with 15″ wheels and Rudy’s did come with the 17 inchers?

Yesterday I asked Russ to bring in his GPS so we could take a lunchtime run and see how far off my speedometer is. Back towards the end of last year when Russ first got his GPS he brought it along on a lunch trip to Hardee’s while I drove. He showed me one of its neat tricks was that it could calculate your speed when moving. Over a portion of road that is marked at 55 and my speedometer was reading 60, his GPS said I was going 57 MPH. Today’s drive produced some interesting results. Just like last year on the stock tires when the speedometer read 60, the GPS said 57. We then got on the Interstate from our secondary road. At 70 indicated the GPS told us I was actually traveling at 66 MPH. And just like Saturday, 80 MPH on the speedo translated into 75 MPH. To get an actual 80 MPH ground speed the speedometer was reading 85. While we where going that fast I put the pedal to the floor just to see what it would do. Unfortunately it was up a slight grade to our fast approaching exit, so the GPS reported a max speed of 96.2 MPH. At that level the speedometer was one tick over 100 or 102.5 indicated.

Using today’s figures I show that my speedometer is reading about 6.5% low. If I use the Miata.net Tire Size Calculator, going from 205/45 x 16 (tire diameter of 23.3in) to a 195/50 x 15 (tire diameter of 22.7in) results in a 2.5% low reading. Was the GPS accurate? Are my 195/50 x 15 tires actually 22.7 in diameter? Did Mazda calibrate the speedometer differently for different wheel sizes? What is their tolerance on the speedometer readings from the factory? Does anybody really know what time it is?

*An unprofessional driver on an open course. Don’t try this at home!