What started as one woman’s off-the-cuff invitation to Miataphiles in the general area has morphed into a pilgrimage of sorts to worship the great road of the sports car.
Nine years ago 44 cars came to the Lodge. Word of mouth (and internet mailing lists) caused a jump in attendance to 144 the next year by year five the estimates of attending cars grew to over 500. The first year we all stayed at the same place, year 2 it expanded to some of the local hotels in the nearest town, Robbinsville, NC. By the fifth, people had to find accomodations as far as 75 miles away and if you wanted to stay at the meeting place, the Tapoco Lodge, you had get on a waiting list that was pages long.
The 5th was the last Donna and I attended, it had gotten too big, too unruly and too not about what it once was. but we still missed it and every year we would say to ourselves, let’s go up, even just for Saturday. But the trip is 5 hours in each direction and walk up motel rooms are non existent, so we never go. This year we found a way and went.
We only saw a few Miatas in downtown Robbinsville where we had lunch. We passed a couple on our way north to “Miata Central.” The parking lot at the Tapoco Lodge was packed as always. The driveway in was lined on both sides by Miatas leaving just enough room for one lane of traffic. We just parked at the end and walked in avoiding the hassle. We saw met up with the one couple from the Master’s Miata Club that still goes every year and chatted with them a bit.
While we were standing there all of a sudden in shows up a new can’t be bought yet, 2006 MX-5. Like flies on cow poop, soon you couldn’t even see the car for the crowd of people it attracted. After we left and way too late to do anything about it I thought I should have taken a picture of the crowd to post here with the caption “New Miata!”
After the crowd thinned around the new car I wandered over and had a sit in the driver’s seat for a minute or two. Here is my incomplete 100 word or less review:”The seats have a lot more bolstering than the older cars. While the door sills are probably only an 1″ or so higher it felt more Boxster-like than Miata-ish at first. Parked next to a lowered red NA it looked like a lot bigger car too. When I went from an NA to NB it was seamless, everything was slightly more modern looking, but it was pretty much the same car. This, on initial impression, seems a very different car, but I’ll have to drive it to know for sure.”
After that we hooked up with Ernest and Cheryl again. We drove over to the nearby Fontana Village wondering if that was were a lot more Miatas were because they agreed with us, it didn’t seem as heavily attended as in previous years. On the 15 mile drive over, we past several small groups of Miatas, but not the usual gaggle. At Fontana we found maybe a half dozen Miatas scattered over the big complex. There we split up, they headed back to the Tapoco and we headed south back to Anderson.
We drove all the way up and didn’t even drive the fabled road. That is very OK for 2 reasons: 1) We are going back in September with the Master’s Club and 2) getting a great big ol’ heaping dose of driving the surrounding roads is just as much fun. Just don’t get stuck behind an old man in a big Lincoln with Florida plates.
Started up, went down, back up, back down, up again, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 246
