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Baseball is back and the FRS have lost the first three games of the season. The Boston press is already writing stories about the Red Sox 2012 season being doomed or don’t worry it is only 3 out of 162. Today the Sox had a 3 run lead going into the bottom of the 9th inning. Detroit scored three runs to tie it. The FRS scored two in the top of the 11th to take the lead, but Detroit promptly scored 3 in the bottom of the inning to win it. I was already leaning towards Gloom & Doom, but after today’s effort I’ve fallen completely over.
Both cars got a bath today, the Sonata to remove the Georgia red clay from the wheel wells and the Florida bugs off the front, while the Miata had the last of the pine pollen rinsed off.
Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1127
The Purple Whale is spending the night at Taylor Hyundai getting his 15,000 mile beauty treatment. Because we learned our lesson last time (call and schedule in advance a couple weeks) we have a loaner car from the dealer.
It is a 2011 Hyundai Azera with 2,222 miles on the clock. I don’t have the greatest relationship with loner cars(1, 2) and this one is no exception.
Or maybe it is just me, because I’m sure this is a very fine automobile, but it is severely lacking in quite a few categories compared to its cousin the 2011 Sonata. The styling leaves a lot to be desired, both internally and externally, the front leg room is less than an Elantra we tried, the leather seats are rock hard, uncomfortable and slippery, and it wallows down the road like a mid-seventies GM sedan.
On the plus side it has a bigger engine, a V-6, that puts out about 30% more HP than the Sonata (but the gas mileage is 20% less.) The only other thing that is nicer than the Purple Whale is that it has Dual Climate Control.
The sticker was in the glove box and the MSRP was over $4,000 more than the Sonata. To be fair, I’m sure the esthetics, both inside and out are much better in the newly redesigned 2012 Azera. But it is no wonder they had to turn this into the Service Dept Loaner, they would never get want they wanted for this wallflower with all the new Fluidic Sculptured, larger and cheaper Sonatas on the lot.
This a picture of the first 4-door automobile the Bogarduses ever owned. It is a 1981 Honda Civic all fitted out with our bikes on the roof rack. If you look carefully you can see Donna in the driver’s seat waiting patiently for me to get back in the car so we can go somewhere, possibly New Orleans. The building in the left background was the apartment building where we lived in Meridian, MS while I was assigned to the Naval Air Station there.
I was working second shift and Donna was going to school during the day so we needed two cars. The four door joined a similarly colored 1980 Civic 3-door hatchback in our stable*. The 4-door only stayed with us for a year and a half before being traded in on a 1983 Honda Prelude in, you guessed it, maroon. I could never really get comfortable in the 4-door because the seat didn’t go back far enough for me, while in the hatchback it did.
*I would have said garage, but that would have been incorrect because we just had spots in the apartment complex LOT and not even assigned ones.
It is also the last 4-door car we owned for 30 years. Until the Purple Whale came along, who by the way, got a nice little bath this afternoon.
We took the Sonata into the Whale Doctor for its 7500 mile check up and came away with a clean bill of health. It actually had a little over 8,142 miles, but we didn’t get scolded for it. Along with the oil change, fluids top off, tire rotation and wash and vacuum, they did a couple of service bulletins. The first one, left pulling (if you let go of the wheel the car would drift to the left), I told them I didn’t have the issue, but they insisted on following the procedure anyway. Number two was an ECU flash to adjust the transmission shift points, which I had wanted as I felt the car was shifting a little rough in certain gears and situations. It does seem to shift a little bit smoother now. I don’t know whether the ECU flash had anything to do with it, I’d swear the car feels peppier off the line…
By way of apologizing for having to endure the trouble of bring my car in to have these issues taken care of, Hyundai gave us a $25 Visa Gift Card. Sweet. The dealer even threw in a $5 Walmart card…
Tonight when I checked our Visa card card balance online I noticed that there were two charges on there for Delta Airlines. One for a $1500 charge and a second one for $25. The first thing I did was to ask Donna if we were flying anywhere. Then I called the Credit Card Company. They were polite and efficient about the whole thing and we will be getting some new cards in the mail within 48 hours. But they were too efficient in that I was left to try and remember who I had used that card with for reoccurring payments, because after I hung up the phone, I went back online to find out, the account was already gone.
I ended up picking two photos from two different photographers.
This afternoon I washed all the carbuncles, barnacles, algae and sea weed off the Sonata that had accumulated over the trip.
Redbird Creek from the Lookout “Tower” in Fort McAllister State Park.
Just one GA State Park cache today and we counted it towards Bryan County as well. Since Thursday we managed 15 caches that counted as 21 towards our Georgia Challenges (13 counties, 5 DeLorme pages and 3 State Parks.) After the second day in a row of coastal Georgia we both agreed that we have seen enough salt marshes to last us for awhile. Which prompted Donna to ask why we never tired of the other coast’s big rocks and pounding surf? The only answer I could come up with is that it reminds our lizard brain of the sound of our mother’s heartbeat in the womb.
The blue-violet baleen has really needed a bath. Poor thing was just covered in jet exhaust film from ten days in an airport long term lot and the past three days worth of squashed low country bugs. This afternoon it got just that and an internal cleaning as well.
We ran a couple errands after work today, the last of which was to pick up our evening meal, a buy one get one free spaghetti dinner. Trouble came when we left the restaurant parking lot, home was to the left and making a left on this road at this time of day is nearly impossible, so I made a right. Then I hung a quick left on a road I have passed by a zillion times, but had never driven. When I got to the next stop sign I realized where I was. Back to the right was a road I had already traveled on the way to the restaurant and away from home. To the left and towards home was a dead end with a little dirt spur that dumped out behind Walmart.
I went left. The little dirt spur was in a lot worse shape than I remembered. The pot holes were separated by not much of level and because of the recent afternoon thunderstorms, filled with dirty brown water. Slow and careful driving allowed me to keep most of the wheels out of the divots. Then to top it off, the final obstacle was a curb to drive down off of to get back to pavement. Thank goodness we weren’t in the Miata.
The Purple Whale got a deserved bath after the spaghetti dinner.
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.
We took Friday off and drove down to HHI for a “working” vacation geocaching along the way. We managed to grab 5 caches on the way down, not many, but they were quality caches towards our Georgia Geo Challenges as they counted for 3 counties and one DeLorme page. The second half of the day was rained out so we headed to Hilton Head instead of looking for the other two caches in 2 Georgia State Parks. We figured we would get them before heading home on Sunday. Of course when we made it to the condo it was sunny.
This turned out to be a good thing in two ways. First, it allowed us to take pictures of 4 of the 5 condos that needed updating, freeing Saturday morning for a nap. And second, we found out when we got home on Sunday, we would have never found the cache in Fort McAllister State Park because it had been moved and I still had the old coordinates loaded.
The whole time we spend on the Island we had beautiful weather. Saturday morning we got in nice long walk on the beach and for most of the return trip we shadowed a dolphin as it fed in the surf. The above mentioned nap. Takeout lunch from Gruby’s NY Deli on the balcony of the condo. The last set of condo photos was taken in between one set of folks checking out, the clean up and another set of people checking. DTCQ took us out for a nice dinner at the Skull Creek Boathouse where we ate and watched the Kentucky Derby on about 12 big screen TVs. (How is it that someone who lives in a horse town could have no clue that the Derby was being run that day?)
Sunday morning we got going early as we wanted to get to Skidaway Island State Park near Savannah when it opened. There was a bonus cache we were eligible to find that was tide dependent. It needed to be sought at low tide because you had to cross tidal marsh to retrieve it. Low tide this morning was 06:51, the Park opened at 07:00 and we made the trail head by 07:10. And although we were only like 30 minutes past the listed time for low tide, it was a little scary crossing the marsh. Being total landlubbers, we understood the principles of how tides worked, but were not too sure that the sine wave profile usually shown for tides was 100% accurate and wondered if it was more digital looking (i.e. on|off|on|off) and we might be washed out to sea at any moment. In spite of our worries we did make the find and get back to dry land safe and sound. To say the official State Park cache was a let down after the bonus cache is not an exaggeration, but it was still an awesome cache in its own right with marsh views, palm trees, Spanish moss and a close encounter with a white tailed deer.
We then headed home to the usual Sunday evening drudgery of washing clothes, grocery shopping and getting ready for the work week ahead.
Today we drove the Miata to work and for the first time ever it seemed small. Tonight the big car got a bath for tomorrow’s appointment with the optometrist for some sunglasses (windows are getting tinted.)
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