Year: 2002

Frost On Your Nose

Hit the road about 8am to finish the rest of the trip to Orlando. The Impala is quiet and eats up interstate expansion joints smoothly. It seems to get pretty good gas mileage and the AC is powerful enough to put frost on your nose in the middle of summer. The radio has this cool feature that if you are tuned into a station that has this feature it will put the call letters in the display where the frequency is for every one else. It also keeps playing after you shut the car off and remove the key, but shuts off as soon as any door gets opened. Another feature that is disconcerting until you are used to it is the headlights and dome light stay on for a few minutes after you shut the car off and walk away. One “feature” I’ve never liked is the automatically locking of the doors when the car is put in gear. As a matter of fact we actually locked our selves inside the car for a while. The first time Donna came to a stop she just turned the car off. It was still in drive. The doors didn’t automatically unlock. Just using the lock button on the doors would *NOT* unlock the car. Putting the shift lever into park didn’t work either. We had to put the car in park, start it up and then shut it off again before the locks would release.

Enterprise Car Rental

When we picked up the rental car and were doing the walk around, Donna mentioned to the agent that the left front tire looked low. She replied, “We are on a hill.” I looked, and the way the car was parked, it looked like a reasonable response. After about fifty miles of driving we were thinking about seeing if we could swap cars in Orlando because it had a vibration that was bordering on annoying. At a stop for refreshments on all level ground the tire still looked low. We put some air in it and the vibration went away. What do you know? Never doubt Donna when she says a tire is low!

Barely See Her In The Rear

At lunch we went out to run an errand and it was already so hot that we put the top up. For the afternoon we stretched the cockpit cover over the car with the top up and the windows down to keep the interior cool. Not pretty, but functional. Crazy Red sells one that is designed to go over a raised top (and roll/style bars,) but I’m not sure it would be worth buying at this point as we just bought this one. Maybe if we end up with a lot of the raised top situations…

After work we stopped by Enterprise Car Rental to pick up our temporary ride. This weekend we are headed down to Orlando for a mini-family reunion. If we were going for a week we would have drove the Miata, but where roughly 1/4 of the total 3 day weekend time is spent in the car on the interstate we want something a little more comfortable for the trip. We reserved a standard size with a CD player, we ended up with a full size Chevy Impala and just a tape deck, no big deal. The Impala is BIG (at least compared to the Miata,) on the drive home Donna was following me in the Miata and I could barely see her in the rear view mirror. Tonight we were going as far as Savannah and then finish the trip on Saturday morning.

Started down, went up, went down, still down.
Top Transitions sine 02/02/02: 201

Water Droplets

Kept the top up during the day because there was a higher probability of rain than yesterday. I didn’t notice, but it did rain during the afternoon sometime because there were water droplets on the hood and trunk when we went home at 4:30. Ironically the cockpit cover would have protected the interior today.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Top Transitions since 02/02/02: 199

Open A Crack

Had a test of the cockpit cover’s rain protection today. Heard the thunder and went outside to check to see if I should put the top up. It was already sprinkling hard, so I headed out to put it up. By the time I walked 10 more steps the sky opened up. Since we park out in the north forty, I figured I would get soaked on the trip out and the inside would too on the transition, so I went back inside to wait out the rain. Poured big time for about 15 minutes. After the rain virtually stopped I went out to inspect the results. The inside was fairly wet. The cover I’m sure reduced to quantity of water by lots, but it took a towel I keep in the trunk and a half a roll of paper towels to get the inside of the top and the seats dry enough to drive home in. At home I placed a bunch of other tools on the carpet behind the seats and on the rear package self to soak up the rest of the water. Not entirely dry inside now, but if I leave the windows open a crack tomorrow with the top up it will dry the rest of the way (as long as another errant shower doesn’t pass by.)

Started up, went down, went up, back down, still down.
Top Transitions since 02/02/02: 197

More Time Constraints

Both my wife and I are tired of being tired all dang day. Our normal bed time has been between 11 and 11:30 and with a 5:30 wake-up call that is not much sleep. So today we decided that the light was going out at 10:30 to give us a little extra shuteye. There goes another hour of time that I can’t use to do stuff. Couple that with the fact that work is busy, things are starting to backlog.

Instant Gratification

Almost a repeat of yesterday, except that I put the top down in the garage this morning instead of it being down already. Well it is the end of the month and I get my allowance to spend on Miata goodies. I’m thinking of going with some aluminum pedals. I do want to upgrade my door and headrest speakers as well, but can’t do it at this level (I would have to wait until next month.) Oh the dilemma, instant gratification with pedals or anticipate the sound upgrade

Started up, went down, went up, still up.
Top Transitions since 02/02/02: 194