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On Thursday afternoon, not long after we left the Valve Store’s™ parking lot, the Purple Whale crossed the 18,000 mile barrier.
On Saturday morning, not too far from home, the Emperor passed through the 126,000 mile mark on the way to Augusta.
After losing the first game of the series against the Cleveland Indians, the Red Sox have won the last three games. Is this the start of a turn around like in 2011 or is this just slight blip designed to get my hopes up, so they can drop the next 4 games in a row and crush those hopes?
Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1136
For whatever reason, there was gobs of traffic heading east on I-10 with us today all through Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. Fortunately there were no major slow-ups, except the tunnel under Mobile Bay, so we made great time, but we were always surrounded by fast moving cars and trucks. Mysteriously, traffic thinned to almost nothing once we got into Florida and past Pensacola.
But wouldn’t you know it, but as soon as we got off I-10 to hit the back roads of Florida, we ran into a convoy of farm implements crawling along at 25MPH. The roads were hilly and curvy enough that we, along with some others, were stuck behind them for about 20 minutes. We thought we caught a break in Campbellton when 2 of the three went straight and only one turned right with us staying on Florida Route 2. It was short lived though, as those two just took a different route through town and two minutes later popped back in front of us. Sigh.
We hunted only two caches today as we wanted to make big mileage, one was in Mississippi and the other was in Alabama, bringing us to having found caches in 40% of these United States.
Tonight we are staying at the same Holiday Inn Express in Bainbridge, GA as we did Monday evening on our way west. This time it is different, and not just because we are in a different room from then, but the hotel is flirting with disaster this weekend as it is where the band Molly Hatchet is staying while playing at the 1st Annual Redneck Expo & Golf Cart Rally that’s here in town.
The Purple Whale passed the 17,000 mile level near Spanish Fort, MS.
Somewhere outside Fort Gaines, Ga the Purple Whale surpassed the 16,000 mile mark. Today we visited 2 Georgia State Parks and a State Conservation Park. We scored caches in 3 GA DeLorme Map Pages and 11 Georgia Counties. Along the road today we spotted a fox squirrel, a turtle and a field mouse. We also spotted Jesus carrying a cross and a naked lady with a lizard in her hair.
Miss me?
Spent last week in Matthews/Mint Hill, NC “learning” how to program our new Mori Seki NTX100-SZ to turn, literally, raw steel into parts that in turn go into valves which make the world go round. I was not alone in this endeavor, thank goodness, a real CNC programer (Hi, Mark!) and 2 guys that are going to be the machine’s operators came along with me.
We drove up early Monday morning and spent the next 5 days in class soaking up all we could about how to use a CAM program called Esprit. We can only hope it was enough…
Between all that learnin’ we did a whole lot of eating. There were four breakfast buffets at the hotel and you know me and buffets, I eat a lot at them to make sure I get my money’s worth, even though Uncle ASCO was paying. The school provided all 5 lunches from local places and they were very good and all of them were larger than I normally eat. Of the four evening meals, two of them were at Razzoo’s, where it is impossible to stop eating once you start in on their over-sized plates of food. Plus there were Rat Toes to consume as an appetizer.
Somewhere just north of Columbia, SC the Purple Whale passed the 15,000 mile mark.
Started down, went up, back down, back up, down again, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1126
The return trip from the Land of Orange Trees was an adventure. First I forgot to create a pocket query for the three remaining counties we wanted to get in south Georgia. Then we couldn’t find free Wi-Fi anywhere for me to get online to make one. When we did find free wi-fi at Mickey D’s the charge on the laptop battery was so low it was insufficient to get the query information downloaded to the GPSr and PDA.
We walked over to a Cracker Barrel from McDonalds for lunch and as we were led to a table Donna asked if there was one near an outlet (so we could charge up the laptop.) The hostess made a sharp left and seated us across the room from where she was original intending to place us. This turned out to be a little good, wall plug, and very bad, because when our waitress arrived with Donna’s water and my sweet tea she promptly spilled both big glasses on the table and on me. Donna didn’t get wet, but I got a kind of wet/damp on one sleeve and both upper pant legs.
After the pre lunch “bath”, things were nothing but better, as we were now out of Florida, off the awful Interstate and onto the beautiful back roads of Georgia. But first, one of the caches we needed (Lowndes County) was within walking distance of the Cracker Barrel. As a bonus it turned out that not only did it satisfy the county, but was also worth a needed Delorme page.
Cache number two, which was for Lanier County, took us to the lovely small town of Lakeland, GA. The “Welcome To” proclaimed it was the the Georgia’s Historic Mural City. On our circuitous route through town on GA135 we didn’t see any murals…until we crossed Main Street where we noticed a lot of folks dressed up and several Model A Fords parked. We quickly parked, jumped out and walked towards the excitement. They were filming something with the towns folks posing near a building with one of the murals. We asked a couple of the locals who were watching like we were, but didn’t get a real solid answer. Once the thing broke up we wandered around a bit found a few of the apparently many interesting murals.
The last cache we found counted for Atkinson County and was called “Willacoochee Choo Choo” and I’ll let my geocaching.com log do the talking here:
Just from the title I was worried about this one. Little Red Cabooses are our kryptonite and we had already lucked out and found one on this trip, so I just knew we would never find this one! Thanks for this not being a magnetic key holder stuck somewhere on the thousands of square feet of metal on the undercarriage of a train car.
It was just a plain ol’ 35mm film canister well integrated into the environment.
Well, we are 1/13th of the way there after today. Our 1,000th find came in the town of Eastman, GA at a historical home that is now a museum, open only by appointment. The find happened in typical fashion, the GPSr led us to the base of a tree with a nice bit of shrubbery all around its base, the perfect spot to hide a cache, but it wasn’t there. Believe me, we tried to make it be there, we each walked all around the tree twice, separately, but it just wasn’t there. We then checked a couple of surrounding trees and bushes with the same lack of discovery. Finally I started looking under the porch of the house and there it was, thirty eight feet from GZ.
The Purple Whale passed the 13,000 mile mark some where between the 1,000 find and the town of Abbeville, GA where the above court house is.
The Purple Whale joined our automotive stable at the end of last April, approximately 9 months ago, and since then we have put 12,000 miles on it.
From the time the Emperor was new in November of 2003 until the Sonata showed up in April 2011, a total of 7 years and 5 months, we drove it, our only car, for 120,000 miles. If you break that down into miles per 9 month period it comes to a little bit over 12,000 miles.
So on the surface it looks like our driving habits haven’t changed much, 12k miles around every 9 months, but not really. The Miata, in that same April 2011 to January 2012 time frame, has also been driven 5,000 miles. This means our cars have been driven 17,000 in the past nine months. And it is not because I’m driving one car and Donna is driving the other, when one car is moving the other is parked.
I guess I’m going to have to go back and read this blog for that time period and see if we have traveled more than normal.
Started down, went went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1106
On the way back from HHI we grabbed a cache in another State Park in the Sandhills Challenge, Rivers Bridge.
Easy walk to the cache. We swapped out a couple SC Parks items for a couple of McToys and a coveted South of the Border bumper stickers.
After finding the cache we walked the mile straight trail to visit the battlefield. I guess because we are close to the anniversary of the actual February 2nd & 3rd battle there were a group a Civil War re-enacters touring the site as well. We stopped and listened as one gentleman read a letter from a Confederate survivor of the battle.
Thanks for bringing us here.
On February 2, 1865, a Confederate force under Maj. Gen. Lafayette McLaws held the crossings of the Salkehatchie River against the advance of the right wing of Sherman’s Army. Federal soldiers began building bridges across the swamp to bypass the road block. In the meantime, Union columns worked to get on the Confederates’ flanks and rear. On February 3, two Union brigades waded the swamp downstream and assaulted McLaws’s right. McLaws retreated toward Branchville after stalling Sherman’s advance for only one day.
Although historically not a large battle, the Battle at River’s Bridge was significant because it is the last defensive effort of the Confederates against the march of Sherman’s army to Columbia. Actually, only in total, approximately 6,200 soldiers were involved in this battle — 5,000 Union soldiers, and 1,200 Confederate. 262 men were killed — 92 Union and 170 Confederate.
Somewhere on I-95 North this morning the Purple Whale passed over the 12,000 mile mark.
100 episodes is the usual limit that once a TV show passes, it becomes eligible for syndication, and apparently, The Big Bang Theory has recently crossed that threshold, because it is on all over the place.
Being a minor geek, I of course had heard about the show, but never watched it. Until now.
BBT has now replaced Two and a Half Men as our 7 to 8 PM must see TV as it airs then on the local CBS affiliate. It is also on TBS, where if desired you can waste all of Tuesday night away watching back to back episodes for 3 solid hours.
The Purple Whale crossed the eleven thousand mile threshold on Sunday.
Somewhere a little south of Egypt, GA the Sonata passed the 10,000 mile plateau. I was hoping for a Welcome To sign to add to my Travels With Brian gallery, but there was none and really the only thing to distinguish Egypt from any other stretch of south Georgia road was that I had to slow to 45MPH for about a 1/4 mile as we passed a crossroads.
The photo is of a M3A1 Stuart Tank used in WWII from Thursday’s stop at the Georgia Veterans State Park.
This is what the Purple Whale looks like reflected in the side of a tanker truck, possibly carrying Black Oil, on one of Eisenhower’s Interstate Highways. Early this morning, somewhere not too far from Aiken the Sonata’s digital odometer blipped past the 9,000 mile mark.
We searched for a total of 10 caches today and found 7, while DNFing 3. Those finds were very productive though, as they did net 7 GA Counties, 2 GA Delorme pages and one State Park.
Spent the day looking for more of those caches in the RISK Series. We found Argentina, Central America, Greenland, Iceland, North Africa, Northern Europe, Northwest Territory, Ural, Western Australia & Secret Mission #1. Twenty five down and twenty one to go.
If we had traveled to all those places we might have had to drive the Sonata more than the 8,000 miles it now has on its odometer.
Went to SOUTH-TEC 2011 Expo, AKA the Charlotte Tool Show, today with some co-workers. We were there to place eyeballs on a new fancy-schmancy CNC machine we bought and won’t take delivery of for another 16 weeks. And of course, wander every aisle and marvel at all the widgets on display, while managing to score free pens, cheap bags and multi-colored lanyards to give away to the unlucky souls back home who didn’t get to go. We might have even picked up some useful information.
When I first heard we going it was in the company’s Ford 9-passenger van. Ick, who wants to spend 3 hours each way in that thing. When it was confirmed that it was just 4 total going, I offered to drive the group in the Purple Whale. Even with it raining for almost all of the trip, I definitely enjoyed driving in my own car than riding in that van for 340 miles.
Somewhere just south of the South Carolina state line on the way home the Sonata hit the 7,000 mile mark.
We are in a cabin outside Gatlinburg, TN tonight, sharing the place with Donna’s oldest brother and his wife. We are here because we are visiting with some cousins of Donna & Jim from Canada who are in the area while on their vacation. Because we passed right by, at about the right time, we had to have lunch at our favorite place in Hendersonville, West First. They had the whole of downtown Hendersonville, NC blocked off for a classic car show, so we had to walk a little extra bit to get to the restaurant. But that was no real inconvenience because there was plenty of cool old automotive iron to see, but only one was pixel worthy, this spiritual successor to the Miata, a 1965 Lotus Elan.
The Sonata passed the six thousand mile mark somewhere between Gatlinburg and the White Oak Lodge & Resort
We originally thought that when we returned from out west, we would use the remaining days of the week on vacation to go Georgia State Park geocaching. Then, while we were on vacation, we thought we might just go back to work on Thursday & Friday, to save the vacation days for use at another time. Well, we ended up going with Plan A.
Spent about 15 minutes with a couple of train enthusiasts chatting railroading while we waited for a train to pass by here at the Folkston (GA) Funnel — From Wikipedia — With virtually all rail traffic headed to Florida passing through Folkston, the rail lines through the city have acquired the nickname “The Folkston Funnel”. As many as 60 trains a day pass through Folkston heading into and out of Florida, which some years draws ten times as many railfans as people who live in the city. To provide for a safe (and advantageous) viewing situation, the town has followed the example of another high-density rail town, Rochelle, Illinois, and has built a platform for visitors, along with picnic tables, chairs, BBQ pits, restrooms, and grills. And at night, lights shine from the platform onto the double rail so if someone wanted to, he or she could watch after sunset. Trains that come from the north move south toward Savannah, go through the Folkston Funnel, and arrive in Jacksonville. Trains that come from Florida do the same, just the opposite direction. At the covered viewing platform, there is an active scanner running and visitors can listen to train engineers as they run the trains through. As of 2006, there is also free WiFi for laptop users.
The Purple Wale passes 5,000 miles somewhere near Dublin, GA. We find 8 geocaches in 6 different counties, also fill in 3 DeLorme pages and snag 1 State Park.
The Sonata passed the 4,000 mile mark on the way to a friend’s house this evening.
A week ago I received a piece of mail from Amazon informing me that they had made it easier to use my accumulated reward points right at the check out page and that I had a whopping $27.61 points available. Donna was feeling expansive, so she said go ahead and spend them. And because I have been such a good boy I could have an extra ten bucks to cover shipping. I really didn’t need anything in that price range and briefly considered a stuffed purple whale for the back deck of the Purple Whale, but instead opted to upgrade my cheapo computer speakers to some slightly more expensive ones — Cyber Acoustics 3 pc Subwoofer/Satellite System.
Last night I installed the speakers. First up was to remove the old set and if your PC setup is anything like mine, it required a trip under the desk to the land of the Dust Bunnies who live under the mountains of Power Strips and Voltage Converters. I sorted through the hanging wires rounding up the ones associated with the old speakers, unplugging here and there until I had the two small satellite speakers, the 3″ cube that passed for a subwoofer and the power plug/converter in a pile in the bottom of the trash can. The new setup went together with little issue and sounds leaps and bounds better than the one it replaced.
This afternoon I needed to recharge some AA batteries so I placed them inside the charger that rests on the right side of my computer desk. I leave the little sucker unplugged because the manual for it said that doing so would increase its lifespan. When I plugged the the connector into the back of it, nothing happened. Hmmm, usually the display fires up so you can monitor the charging process. Thinking I might have dislodged its power converter plug when installing the speakers I returned to the Land of the Dust Bunnies. I followed the wire down to the power strip and, nope, it was plugged in. I unplugged it and looked at the back of it. It read Altec. Uh oh, that was the brand name of the speakers I just took off. So I rooted around in the trash to retrieve the power plug that I had mistakenly thrown away. Hooked up the correct power thingy to the charger and the display was still blank. Dang.
The photo above shows what happens to capacitors* when 9V AC is applied to where 3V DC is supposed to go. So not only am I hard on batteries, their chargers are none to safe around me either.
*I have no clue if these are 4,000 picofarads or not, but when I looked up farad on wikipedia this phrase caught my eye, When speaking of capacitor values a picofarad is sometimes referred to as a “puff” or “pic”, as in “a ten puff capacitor”. Kind of apt as the capacitors in this charger sure went up in a puff of smoke…
On the way to Columbia today the Purple Whale passed through the 3,000 mile mark. We were going there to do a little geocaching and we ended up finding 3 caches and not finding three caches. And as expected one of the ones we didn’t find was the reason for the whole trip (this might be a blog post of the future.) This evening I washed the Sonata, so it would stop being jealous of the Miata which got a bath on Friday.
A few months back I moved into a new addition to our building. Today Donna got to move into the newly remodeled office space on the opposite end of the front office from where she was. Like those of us out back, every one up there got shiny new cubicles, with shiny new modular furniture inside shiny new short walls.
Several years back, when the company president made one of his quarterly state of the company addresses he told us that he likes low walled cubicles because they fostered communication, so now instead of the previous 60″ high walls everyone now has 48″ surroundings. Foster communication is corporate double-speak for I want to be able stand on one end of the office space and survey my row of minions like a proud farmers looking over his acres of rows of corn. What I have found out on the serf level is that fostering communications really means that you can hear everyone’s conversations, business and personal, every shuffle of paper and every burp and fart for a 6 cubicle radius.
More interesting is in Donna’s area, as opposed to mine, is that they installed alternating rows of 2′ x 4′ florescent light fixtures and the same size white tiles for the entire length of the 70′ long room. The effect is literally blinding. The carpet is a light tan/gray, the walls are a light beige, the cubical walls are light gray and the desk surfaces are light beige. The effect is somewhat akin to standing on the side of the planet Mercury that faces the sun. OSHA states the minimum lighting for office spaces is to be 30 foot-candles, they don’t list a maximum, but my guess is the title of this post is not too far off to what it is in this new area. By the afternoon, Donna’s eyes hurt so bad that she put on her sunglasses at her desk. Tomorrow she is taking in a visor…
The Purple Whale passed the 2,000 mile mark on the way home from the brightly lit cube farm.
The Sonata passed the thousand mile mark on its way to DD this morning in an intermittent rain.
If you stick around on a page here for more than 10 seconds you will notice that I have indeed added a photo of the Purple Whale to the banner. I cheated and just “photoshopped” it over the top of the Emperor. I’m not sure I like it for a few of reasons, 1) the sudden blast of blue in an otherwise maroon and gray page, b) the cars relative scales and iii) it looks photoshopped.
It looks like the only thing that can keep the Red Sox from beating the Angels is the rain. It is tied 0–0 in the 5th inning at Fenway and the tarp is on the field. Looking at the Weather Channel map the rain will taper off about 11:00 PM, so if they do play this I’ll be reading about it in the morning.
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