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We went out driving in the Miata looking for tonight’s Super Moon. Once we got heading east we could see we were in trouble because we could see the tops of thunder clouds on the horizon. It was still in the upper 80’s, but the sun was down and it seemed pleasant enough, so we kept on driving. Followed one road til it T’d at a dirt road, flipped a mental coin and went left. A little less than a mile we came to a paved road with a recognizable name, so we took it and headed back into town for some ice cream.
Part way back, as we drove along a smooth, two-lane back road there was the moon off to the left. Found a place to stop and take some photos, but by that time it was too high in the sky to look anything different that a plain ol’ full moon. Fooled around snapping photos, but nothing came out worth anything except maybe this picture of The Emperor with a car passing in the background taken facing away from the Super Moon.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1132
Here is the 640 x 360 size of the dirty mouth’d Emperor and Donna doing her parade wave.
Last Saturday’s dinner was a seafood buffet at the Mountainview Bistro in Fontana Village. The cost was $21.95 per person, but somehow when they rang up our ticket they entered an extra 21, making the cost of our meal $2121.95 each. With tax and a 20% tip the total bill for Donna and I would have been $5436.44! Fortunately this was before they got a hold of my charge card, so all this amounted to nothing more than an interesting story for this blog.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1090
 Like we did a couple months ago when we drove the Sonata through the Dragon we opted to buy a couple photographic souvenirs. High resolution photos are great, but like local news anchors opinion of HDTV, they can be a little too great. In the little thumbnail to the left, the looks on Donna’s and my face make it seem like we are not having a good time, our expressions make it appear like driving the Gap is serious business*, like we aren’t having fun. Well, we were, and if you click on the thumbnail to look at the full image, reduced to 640 x 360, the frowns are not so noticeable.
*Which I guess in certain ways it actually is.
In the second photo we bought, at least Donna was smiling (my expression is pretty much similar in both) as it was taken on the return trip and knowing where the photographer was allowed her to get her smile ready and even sneak in a parade wave. Once again the high resolution was a slight determent, because when you view the photo at 100% it allows you to notice that the vampire teeth are dirty and count how many leaves are stuck in the grill…
It is about 12 miles from the town of Robbinsville on US129 to where Deals Gap and its 318 turns begin. Up until then it is mostly smooth, mostly flat and mostly straight (well, straight enough that a Miata can run the distance at 55 MPH easy, but in other vehicles your speed may vary.) About 3 miles from the start of the curvy stuff we were barreling along, me & Donna in front and Kurt and Karen not far behind when out pops a small bear cub from the left side of the road.
I take my foot off the gas and tap the brake to slow down. He is probably just going to cross over, but he hears us coming and starts running, not continuing across mind you, but in the same direction of travel as us. I’ve slowed down now to around 30 and both Donna and my head are swiveling looking for the momma bear, because this guy looks huggable sized, maybe 30 — 40 pounds and might not be alone. We don’t see anything but the cub running in the left lane. Just about the time I think he is headed back to the left, he takes a hard right and disappears in front of the car.
I’m going about 20 miles an hour at this point and I’m waiting to feel us run over it, but all we hear is a bump sound and the next thing we see is the small bear sliding down the pavement in the left lane. He skids about 10 feet down the road to a stop in the middle of the left lane. I come to a stop about 10 yards ahead of him. I check my mirror, it looks like Kurt and Karen have stopped pretty much right beside him, and the bear shakes his head a couple times and walks off back to the side of the road from which he came.
Kurt tells us later that as he got to the guardrail and went to duck under, the poor thing bumped his head. He was probably still a little stunned. As were the four of us.
We then drove down the road about a mile and pulled over to look at the nose of the Emperor. Amazingly enough the only sign anything had happened was that that side of the bumper was wet from where I probably knocked the water out of his fur (it had been lightly raining in the area today.)
Coincidentally, about maybe five or ten minutes before this happened, Donna had remarked to me that she was going to be keeping an eye out for bears and deer and such because we are pretty much in the middle of the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest no where near any civilization…
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1085
Changed the header image to one of the photos taken last weekend at the J Strom Thurmond Dam. I have a somewhat similar shot of the Emperor, but not similar enough to do a rotating banner.
I guess if we drove both cars up there, put the camera on a tripod, marked the spot and systematically took two photos, drove both cars home, edited the photos — nah, not worth it. I guess I will have to put a Miata photo up here sometime again though, what with the domain name I have.
Wait a minute, maybe mr-sonata.net is available…
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1079
We took the day off from work today to run some errands, one of which was to go get the Sonata’s windows tinted. Because we were dropping it off and coming back later to get it, we had both cars on the move. Breakfast was at DD and as I looked back at the two cars parked in adjoining spots it really affirmed yesterday’s comment on the size of the Miata.
We killed the two hours while the Purple Whale got his sunglasses by doing a little local geocaching and we found 7 of 8.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1009
You found [Traditional Cache] Victoria Bryant State Park
The water didn’t seem too high as the Miata made it through fine with just a touch of belt squeal post creek crossing. This is our favorite park so far out of the 17 we’ve visited. We took a heart shaped BB game and left a Gingerbread Man watch. Dropped Mickey Mouse TB. TFTH
You found [Traditional Cache] Froggy
Our GPSr led us right to a likely spot. We searched and searched and came up empty handed. We read the clue, well, this spot certainly fits the description. Oh, wait, the clue applies reasonably well to the other side of the trail too. Bingo! There it was. Took nothing and left 3 frog shaped erasers. Found as part of the Georgia DeLorme Challenge (GCZ8XQ)
You found [Multi-cache] The King of Bridges!
We found this in spite of ourselves. First off, read the whole page through and secondly pay attention to what you read. I thought we needed ABCD to fill in the coords for the final so we figured with the clue included in the last paragraph we could wing it without having one of the digits. Sure enough we located the final stage only to be greeted with a combination lock! Huh? Re-read the cache description page and discovered that ABCD is for the lock and the final coords are right there on the cache page. Well we have three of the numbers, we’ll just try those and ten tugs on the hasp with the ten numbers on that last dial. Didn’t work. So we walked back to read the missing number off the green sign for B that we didn’t get on our first try. Turned around and walked back to the cache again. Entered our four numbers and it didn’t unlock. Now we are questioning our counting of reflectors on the bridge. My wife then read the questions out loud to me and when she got to D I had to do a Homer Simpson forehead slapping, “DOH!” That was the ticket. We took nothing and left a Matchbox car and a couple of pencils.
You found [Traditional Cache] Shaking Rock
We almost didn’t stop as we were tired from a long day of caching and still had many miles to get home, but boy are we glad we did. What a neat place. Left a book and took a Travel Bug. Thanks. Found as part of the Georgia County Challenge (GC1B074)
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 968
The Emperor passed the 119,000 mile milestone just outside Thompson, GA this afternoon on his way home from a geocaching adventure in northeast Georgia. We marked off three State Parks, three Counties and two DeLorme pages in two days on one tank of gas.
RE: The picture above, “What were you thinking? Where are you driving to?”
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 967
We went over to the bike/hike trail along I-520 this morning. We wanted to check up on the condition of our three caches there. Plus there were two new caches we wanted to find, along with a couple of dangling DNFs we thought we’d take another shot at.
All three of our caches were AOK, we found the two new caches and DNF’d the two we couldn’t find the first time. It is not always true, but more often than not, if we don’t find it the first time, we won’t find it on return trips.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 913
The Emperor Visits A Graveyard
The middle cache on yesterday’s adventure took us to a Revolutionary War cemetery in Louisville, Georgia.
Today was all about Thanksgiving weekend traditions at Domus Bogardi on Boardman Road in Dunbarton Oaks as I blew off the roof and we both then cleaned up the side and front yards of deceased leaves. The afternoon was spent watching 2 of the three Jason Bourne movies and dinner was open faced turkey sandwiches with gravy.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 907
OK, I just might be guilty of #6…
Go to The Oatmeal to read the other 6 things. While you are there, check around, there is lots of other funny stuff there too.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 860
The MMC held its 11th Annual Bug Splat Rally tonight. Can we call it that even if we skipped the year? The first one was in 1999 and for some reason there wasn’t one in 2002.
We only had six cars show for the event, maybe the rains in the area scared a few people off. Last year the event ran through a couple of light showers and most if any caught bugs were washed off by the finish. This year we dodged the rain, but we also dodged almost all of the bugs too.
The Biggest Bug Trophy ended up in the hands a new member couple with their 3″ long streak of moth wing dust. The Closest to the Target was awarded to a small speck about a half inch away from Avery Green Dot. Once again Most Bugs and Cleanest Car Awards were given to the cars that showed up for the run in that condition. The only thing that turned out better than last year was our new route that traveled on a couple of twisty road through rural Aiken County.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 806
Here are six of the nine MMC cars that made the trip to Edgefield for breakfast today. I looks like the life-size statue of Strom Thurmond is orating around 110,000 words, perhaps recreating his famous filibuster, longest ever by a single senator at 24 hours and 18 minutes in length nonstop, in opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1957.
As we arrived at the start point for the trip this morning the Emperor past the 110,000 milestone.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 739
I’ve started the South Carolina Post Office photo book. I liked yesterday’s photo collage thing so well I’m going to use it on the cover.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 501
 There is a sign on US17 in South Newport, GA that proclaims “The Smallest Church in America.” With our love of Roadside Americana we would have stopped to look at it even if there hadn’t been a cache nearby. Donna went inside and read a sign that said you can have your wedding here, it had better be a small party as it would be a tight squeeze with just preacher, bride, groom, best man and maid of honor. At 10′ x 15′ it is pretty small and I’d have a hard time fitting the Miata inside, but someone has found even a couple more churches littler — Smallest Churches in America.
We didn’t do a lot of extra driving today, Google says it is 197 miles from Pooler, GA to Lake City, FLORIDA and we only took 244 to get here. It was raining when the day started and for most of the trip it varied from drizzle to downpour until we entered the Sunshine State. Then true to it’s nickname the skies cleared and within a few miles we had the top down. Found 7 geocaches today, including our first one in Florida, DNF’d only one and that was another Florida first.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 483
The Miata cockpit can be a very warm place for various reasons. It is not helped that the outside air vented into the cockpit is heated 15–20 degrees above the ambient outside air.
 Several years back I decided to try and cool this air down. I used nearly every trick that I could unearth on the Miata Forums, ensure the heater flap closed fully, close holes in hood with tape, stuff a piece of insulation in the seal between cowl and engine compartment and tape over holes in firewall leading to the windshield cowl area, yet I remained defeated. On my own I thought maybe if I removed the big plastic piece over the inlet for the cabin air I might get some outside air directly in the system. This exposed a big opening directly to the vent system’s squirrel fan covered only with a wide mesh appropriately sized to keep out overweight house cats.
 Having had to clean small leaves and pieces of pine straw out of that fan from inside the car a few times in my Miata owning career (major milestone approaching) I thought it would be a good idea to cover that up. The only thing I had handy was a spare 20x20 house HVAC filter. So I cut out a piece of the fiberglass mesh roughly the size of the opening, edged it in some maroon duct tape I had left over from covering the holes in the hood and taped it over the opening.
 I change the “cabin air filter” out each time I change the oil which is about every 3 months. Do I breath cleaner air because of this filter, I doubt it, what with all the time I spend with the top down, but it must be doing something judging by how dirty it looks when I swap it out. If you look in the clean filter picture above you can see a bunch of debris to the right of the filter, I don’t think this would have made it into the fan without the filter because of the 2″ vertical wall of the opening (probably designed that way to keep out water), but stuff has made it in there before, probably due some sort of perfect storm scenario, and since I have been using this filter method nothing has made in there yet.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 467
Time for the Emperor to dress up for Halloween.…
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 418
 I need to swap the bedroom set to the summer bedroom. I need to clean the pine pollen off the back deck. The garbage disposal in the kitchen has stopped working, so I need to take it apart and see what has jammed it up. I still have 12 days of vacation photos sort through.
So what did I do today? We went geocaching, on a Time Speed Distance Rally with the MMC, watched two episodes of West Wing and I’m listening to the FRS on the internet.
Oh, and I have to order a new battery for the Miata.
We finished a disappointing tied for fifth (out of 6 cars) in the rally this morning. We made one error due to a misleading statement from the rally masters misinterpretation and another because of a missed a clue. We felt that we had kept track of the time and mileage overruns, but even subtracting them from our totals we were still way over and lost big points. The capper was I worked a pounds to kilogram conversion the wrong way and blew the bonus question.
After lunch at the BBQ place one of the Club members had left his lights on and the car wouldn’t start. That is a picture of three of us trying to push start him. After about 4 or 5 attempts we gave up on that and went inside to see about borrowing some jumper cables. The jump start work its magic and off he went.
On the way home Donna and I stopped at a quick stop store in south Augusta to get a bottled water and a Sprite. When we got back in the car I turned the key and was met with silence. Hmm, did I have the clutch all the way in? Tried again and still nothing, but radio display flashed as I went by. The dome light was on, so I figured it wasn”t a dead battery. Funny thing was that with the ignition switch in the ACC position the radio display would flash and there was a clicking sound (like 2 relays) coming from the instrument cluster.
Pulled out the cell phone and called Rudy (AKA Clunk) (or is it Thunk) and his first thought was battery, even after I described the symptoms. He said hold on, I’ll get the truck and come take a look. Thirty minutes later Rudy and Patti pull up. He brought some wrenches so we could remove the battery and (for what I figured was for testing purposes) the battery out of his Mazdaspeed Miata. We swapped batteries and the car started right up. According to Rudy the newer batteries don’t give you any warning, like they used to in the olden days. now they just up and die. We called a couple places to see if they had any batteries for the car and one said we don’t carry ‘em, called the dealer and the other had one, but for $90 and he was all the way on the other side of town. Rudy has his truck and Patti just got a new Lexus, so he let me babysit his battery for a while.
It is still going to cost a hundred bucks or so for the battery, but it won’t be a generic replacement from Autozone, it’ll be a quality Westco replacement that is designed for the Miata.
Thanks Rudy.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 180
 This post is coming to you from a fresh install of Windows 7 Beta Build 7000. I tried in vain along with millions of other geeks to download a copy from the Microsoft web site on Friday, but it didn’t happen because the biggest software company in the world wasn’t prepared for the onslaught.
Like anything on the internet there is always more than one way to skin a cat. I used bittorrent to snag a copy of the ISO that has been floating out there for a week or two already. I didn’t know how long this beta version would stay viable without an activation key, those too were supposed to be available on Friday too (at least 2.5 million anyway), but they were just as unavailable as the OS was. The interweb saved the day there too, someone left a comment on a LifeHacker thread that listed some of the keys that people had managed to get. I plugged the first one in and activated this copy. It is supposed to be good until August of this year. Probably by that time I will be needing a new PC and will get a legal copy with it instead of having to buy it out right.
Update: Just found out that Microsoft has decided that they screwed up and to make amends they have extended the availability of the Beta until January 24th and will not cap the activation keys at 2.5 million — Go Get It. You still have to have, or sign up for, a Windows Live ID (or an MSN Hotmail, MSN Messenger, or Passport account?)
I may go ahead and download a version from Microsoft too, just to be safe.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 98
I had an idea earlier today on something to blog about, but it got lonely, so it left.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 462
 I had uploaded last weekend’s Post Office photos to Flickr! and the old gallery, so tonight I uploaded them to the new gallery too. The Flickr! and old galleries have some captioning, 9 of 23 photos, and the Flickr! ones have been geotagged so that they show on my map. Unfortunately the 200 photo limit on the free ride takes away a lot of the map’s impact because as I fill in one spot of the state, another clears out…
It is also almost October and that means Halloween. Time to break out the decorations, including the Vampire teeth for the Emperor.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 421
Both the FRS/Braves game and this blog are in a rain delay.…
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 209
 When I was making The Emperor’s New Screensaver #2, I wanted to find out what Lina Rosio meant so I could use it for the title, so I Googled it.
The first 4 hits were places selling the poster where I learned it was by someone named Choppy and I guessed he was French. Tried plugging in Lina Rosio in a translation tool, French to English, with no luck, came back as lina rosio. Hmmm, sounds Spanish. A Spanish to English try netted the same results. Trying Portuguese, I found out Lina means linen, but nothing for Rosio. Lina is a Chinese name that means beautiful woman. I googled for rosio and that lead me to the Urban Dictionary. Lina — Nice beautiful young woman and Rosio — A girl that is funny, cool, sexy, and everything else. She also can be a firecracker if you get in her face to long. Somehow I think this poster predates the UD, maybe it’s definitions have been influenced by this poster? Or by the Chinese? Giving up, I just titled the image Lina Rosio.
Back to Google, my Miata gallery with the image was at #9. At number 5 was a fellow’s Flickr page of the same poster but in a different town in SC. His photo came from Walhalla about 60 miles northwest of Abbeville where mine was taken. Right after my number nine return was the Flickr RSS feed of someone named Genipher who has an image of the same poster and hers was taken in Abbeville too.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 4
Finished up the images for my 2007 Emperor Calendar. It is titled Must Have Been Those 400 Acid Trips I Took because I have taken some of my photos of the Miata and ran them through a few different Paint Shop Pro filters to give them that slightly twisted look. See the Miata — 2007 Calendar gallery on the side bar a preview.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 488
 For the past couple of years I’ve made up a nifty wall calendar using images of the Emperor I have taken over the previous year. You can see the images I have used by clicking on the appropriate link under Photos in the sidebar.
This year I haven’t been taking that many photos of the car, so I don’t think I’ll have 12 that will be calendar worthy. I do have about half enough, but even then, that is stretching the suitability envelope. While monkeying around with some of the possibles I hit upon a strategy that might work for 2007 — photoshopped images. This way I can go back and maybe use some outtakes from earlier photoshoots. I can possibly turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse. Well, I’ll be the judge of that…
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 465
 I’ve been driving by a lot of cute little ones lately. They have been calling out to me, “Take my picture. Take my picture. Come on, you know I’m cute. The light is right and the car is clean. What are you waiting for?” We have driven by this little Post Office numerous times on our trips to, and from, Hilton Head and every time I see it I note the name and it’s correlation to the Emperor’s “official” color name. And every time I see it I am tempted to stop. This time I did. A Garnet Red Mica Miata in front of the Garnett, SC 29922 Post Office.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 449
Voting is well underway in the 2nd Annual “My Favorite Miata Photo” Contest. If you haven’t voted yet please do, polls close this Sunday at noon eastern time. Because that is open to anyone to vote it is more of a popularity contest and it looks like there are photographers with a lot of friends, of the 382 votes so far they have 200 (53.2%) of them.
I was hoping for a more artistic judging on the photos and wasn’t getting it, so seeing as it is my contest I created a separate prize category for some Judge’s Choice awards. I picked my favorite 8 photos and emailed all eight of the photographers and asked them to rate the entries. They should omit their photo and rank the other seven in order from #1-their favorite to #7-their least favorite. I would award a sliding scale to their rankings with more points awarded for first and less points for each successive lower rank.
So far I have received 5 of 8 replies, if any of you would like to be a guest judge to fill in the three vacancies please do. Go to this gallery to see just the eight finalists and email me your rankings from top to bottom. Because you get to rank all 8 I’ll be tossing out the last one. Ballots will be accepted in the order in which they are received. Of course if all three of the official judges eventually reply yours will get tossed out like so many hanging chads.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 396
 Washed the car this morning in preparation for today’s MMC gathering for the Sno-Cap Drive In’s 42nd Anniversary. We had a pretty decent showing of cars, six, but all of us were late arrivals, so we were beat to the shady spots under the awning by the Corvettes and the VWs.
I was a few minutes late because I stopped for an impromptu photo shoot at the empty Andy Jones car dealer lot. Andy Jones open a Mazda dealership in Aiken a year or so after I bought my first Miata. A couple years later they moved 15 miles west to this shop in North Augusta. Now they have packed up and moved 20 miles further west to Augusta, GA.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 348
 This morning we braved the sticky weather to go for a 2 mile walk in the woods, instead of our usual 10 mile Sunday morning bike ride. Afterwards we continued the alternative Sunday by getting a bagel at the Atlanta Bread Company instead of a muffing at the New Moon Cafe. I took a couple photos on our walk, including one that matched this post’s title, but in retrospect, even though she pointed out the image to me, Donna felt I shouldn’t put it here.
So tonight, when we went out to do a little shopping and get some gas, I brought the camera along to find a my suitable picture. This one was taken outside of CVS and after a little digital manipulation…
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 310
Put the Vampire Teeth back in the mouth and washed the car. Tomorrow is the Ridge Spring Peach Festival and the MMC is in the parade…
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 207
 Aiken, SC to Washington, GA where we lunch on the square at a place called the Jockey Club. Donna had, appropriately, a Club Sandwich, with soup and a salad while I had a Chicken Salad Sandwich with french fries. The food was good, but the highlight was definitely the fries. Real potatoes, hand-cut and deep fried to perfection. After lunch we walked off our meal by doing a lap around the square where we discovered a cool old hotel, The Fitzpatrick Hotel, built in 1898 and operated for 50 years. Then sat neglected for another 50, before being bought and totally renovated and has been open for only the past two. Donna walked into the lobby dragging me with her. We poked around on the ground floor for a while when an employee invited up to look at some of the guest rooms. Very classy. We are going to go back in May when the town holds one of its two big cruise-ins and spend the night, if we can get a room…
After Washington we headed northeast to Watson Mill State Park. we had visited there way back in 1998 on one of our covered bridge tours. We have a little book we bought that has a bunch of Georgia attractions that we bought back then and right there in the margin was the date we visited (4/10/98) and the notation, “Very nice, need to come back.” Well we did and it was worth it again. Guess we’ll schedule another visit in 2014.
We are spending the night in the Holiday Inn Express in Elberton, GA. Us and a bunch of bass fishermen, because there is a team tournament being held on Thurmond Lake this weekend. The only problem with that, besides worrying that somebody will drag their boat trailer across the hood of the Miata trying to park 60′ of vehicle, is ice is very scarce. Neither machine in the complex spit out any frozen water, pushing the button resulted in nothing but whirring noises. I had to go to the front desk to get my little plastic bucket filled. We have 4 channels of HBO on the TV and for our viewing pleasure this evening, on two of them, is Catwoman with Halle Bery. I’ve got a whole ‘nother rant post about our stay which may come your way later.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 87
And sometimes a good chuckle.
Inside the Miata’s Birth Announcement was a photograph of the proud father and his new baby. Check that pose, I guess that was what I thought was cool. Looks a little too much like an awkward teen aged boy who “just happened” to be hanging around the malt shop hoping to get noticed by that car load of cheerleaders.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 25
Continue reading A Picture Is Worth A 1,000 Words
Either sometime last night or early this morning the Emperor passed the 31k mark. I’m betting it was yesterday sometime as the odo tonight, when I noticed it, read 31038.
I have narrowed down all the Miata photos I have taken in the last year to the 20 finalists for the 2006 calendar. I need 13, one for each month and then one for the cover page. I’ll probably create a separate gallery for the calendar. While I’m at it I might do a gallery for the 2005 photos too. The seven also-rans from 2006 and the ones already in the Miata gallery that aren’t in the ’05 calendar will still fill the regular Miata Gallery well enough. I wonder if the PHP gallery software I’m using allows subdirectories?
Guess I might never know. I just clicked on the automatically generated link on each gallery page that is supposed to take you to the author’s web site and he hasn’t renewed his web hosting agreement. I guess now is the time to try the enhanced version that I downloaded a while back. At least that web site is still up.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 349
 Here is another of the pictures taken Thursday at the J. Strom Thurmond Dam. Light was coming from the side, so the sparkley red car looks more maroon, but I kind of like it. I don’t know what kind of tree was shedding on the grass there, but the leaves were quite big and oddly shaped.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 349
 Went out this afternoon looking for a fall like background for Miata photos. I’m working on a 2006 Garnet Red Miata Calendar. I’ve gathered about 16 images in a directory for me to choose from, but I wanted a couple more choices…
This was taken at the power station at the J. Strom Thurmond Dam. I’ve a couple other possibilities from today’s photo safari. One from an intersection not too far from home, plus one or two more from around the dam area.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 347
 I’m only halfway through pruning 2004’s entries. There is a lot of trash entries in there. I’d like to maybe not write so many inane posts, forcing one, even when there is nothing to write about, but I’m afraid if I don’t write something every night, the “good” will never materialize. FYI, this is exactly the kind of post I am deleting…
 One of our routes to Augusta has an old abandoned industrial looking building on it. I always thought it would be a nice backdrop for a Miata photograph, but it is always locked up. But a few times recently the gate has been open, so it is must be used for something. Unfortunately those times we have been on a mission and haven’t had the time to stop.
Last Saturday, Miata photographs were my mission and the gate was unlocked. I drove in and parked near a loading dock. There was a sign that said, “Please check in at office.”, but with its patinaed look I had no idea whether it was current or a holdover from when this place was actually in use. As I turned the corner I noticed a trailer with a door open so I called inside, “Hello.” A fellow in coveralls appeared and said hello right back. I asked him what was this place and he told me it is used as a training facility for heavy equipment operators. (This explains the half dozen old bulldozers, ranging in size from big to real big, parked there (not visible from the road.) It is open on every other Friday and Saturday, but today there was classroom training at a different location because they were installing new classrooms at this site. The rusty buildings aren’t used anymore, but they were a part of a Huber Clay Co. kaolin mine processing plant. I asked if he minded if I parked my car around the other side of the building and took a few pictures. He said no, so off I went.
Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 335
 Spent the morning out cruising looking for Miata photo backgrounds. Time to start gathering images for my 2006 wall calendar. Here are the images I used for the 2005 calendar. I snagged about 4 images that should work today and I must have pretty close to the other eight stored on the hard drive already. For this photo the sun was on the wrong side of the car and seeing as I couldn’t really correct the contrast to my satisfaction I added some grain and pumped up the saturation. I kind of like the effect and this one will probably be for October 2006.
Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 335
 29,000 pairs of socks. 29,000 knives. 29,000 VHS tapes. 29,000 out of date bottles of asprin. And 29,000 used chainsaws.
Today we went to the Jockey Lot outside of Anderson, SC. Someone thought it would be fun, so we planned a trip with the MMC and it was a nice day for a drive. While the Jockey lot is a huge ass flea market, pretty soon it all starts to look alike, did we have fun? You bet. Will we go back? Doubt it. About halfway there the Emperor passed through the 29,000 mile mark. We bought this Miata just before Thanksgiving in 2003 so it looks like we will make it past 30k before the 2 year mark.
Most of the time the skies were blue with scattered clouds, but on the horizon, in every direction you looked there were dark gray clouds. The weather forecast called for a chance of rain and while it never did (on us anyway) everytime we stopped for any lentgh of time everyone put their tops up in case. On the way back we stopped in the quaint little town of Abbeville for lunch. We parked over on the same street as we ended up at the last Trivia Road Rally the MMC did in May. I had snagged a picture of one of our member’s cars as it was parked and the wall and art there made a nice back drop, today the Emperor had it’s portrait taken there too.
Can’t really tell from the picture, but the car was really dirty. I did wipe off the big stuff with a towel I keep handy, but when we got home the car got a much needed bath.
Started up, went down, went up, back down, back up, down again, up again, then down, then up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 322
Nope, just moving back into the old place, with the new furniture. Reclaimed the old name too.
Added a Mr. Fletcher’s Ride Photo Gallery and placed links to all the galleries in the sidebar for your ease. Don’t confuse the Miata Photo Gallery with the category Miata Photos, the Gallery will contain my favorite Miata shots, while the category will be populated with the everyday Miata pictures.
Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 312
Teeth — The Emperor’s Halloween costume arrived in the mail today. Probably install it tomorrow. Pictures to follow, possibly in front of a funeral home or perhaps in a graveyard at night. Instead of calling the Miata “The Emperor” maybe now I should call it “Nosferatu.” The higher cost of gasoline and the need for premium fits right in with that name too.
Peektures — Got the CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) of the Galleries to match the Blog. The Miata photos have the descriptions attached. The Post Office shots will be done tomorrow.
Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 309
Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 296
Since the stickers have been on the car we have ran into a couple people we know around town and the first things out of their mouths were, “What are those Chinese letters for?” That confirms my suspicion that they are way too loud (close up view.) Off they’ll come tonight.
Rick, of Obsession fame, just sent me a link that might be just the thing: YourEmblem.com Kind of pricey, but I’m racking up the dollar total with my failed far-eastern mods…
Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 271
There have been 13 chances for participating in my usual 3 photo memes in July. I have submitted five and all of them have come from the archives. You have to go back to to June 23rd to find a picture shot specifically for a theme. I totally missed on taking a July picture for the Mr. Fletcher’s Ride series (although I could go get an outtake from last month and no one would know, I’m sure nothing has changed.) We spent the weekend in the mountains and I took 4 pictures, three of a very raging waterfall/river and this:
Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 248
Rspeed has produced some new “vintage” wheels called Chaparral 15s that looked like a winner, until they weighed them, 15.5 pounds. Hard to want to add 2 more pounds of unsprung weight back onto each corner. To top it off they also don’t directly clear the larger brakes on the 2001+ Miatas. It can be done, but you have to add a 3 mm spacer behind the wheels. Too bad as they would look killer on the car. For comparison, first the OEM wheels:
Now the Chaparrals in black with a polished lip:
We made it to work this morning with the top down, but put it up because there was an 80% chance of rain. They were 100% right, it started around 10 and rained most of the day. At 4 o’clock when we left it had stopped. We got in the car and dropped the top for the drive home. Halfway out of the parking lot the rained started back up, so as we crept towards the exit I put it back up. It was a nice try…
Started down, went up, back down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 76
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