Year: 2015

Thirty Dollar Folly

Several weeks ago I went to raise up my left arm and owwww! I hurt. It worked fine going up and down while parallel to my body, but put it out to the side and it hurt like the dickens.

So I went for about a week thinking I slept wrong on it and it would get better. The next week was spent in denial that I had a hurt arm by convincing myself I could live just fine with partial movement. After all, I’m right handed, I don’t use my left that much. Turns out I do, so I chatted a bit with the Valve Store’s(TM) occupational nurse and she recommended a couple things to try. One was to take a glucosamine and chondroitin supplement. Some studies have shown that they can help with joint pain for those of us who are older than we think. The other was ice applied to the shoulder 3 times a day and taking the recommended dosage of ibuprofen for a week and if that doesn’t work, go see a doctor before it becomes permanent.

On our weekly shopping trip I picked up a bottle of the G&C stuff. What the heck, not only do I have the hurt wing, but the knee that I had arthroscopic surgery on in 2001 is starting to creak. There were 4 different bottles with different quantities at different prices. What with me being a savvy shopper and all, I picked up the bottle with 300 pills in it because it cost less ($30) than the one with 240 ($35.) The dosage says 3 a day, but it doesn’t say when, so I pop 3 at a time with my evening glass of cran-raspberry juice.

It is almost three weeks of swallowing these pills and the knee creaks just as loud as it did before. Now, the shoulder, that’s feeling a lot better, but I’m sure that is because after the week of ice & ibuprofen and no real improvement, I made an appointment with a doctor. This is a whole other post…

Because I invested the money for the pills, I’m going to finish the bottle. I’ll let you know if a miracle happens some time in the next 2-1/2 months.

Started down, went up, back down, up again, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 06/25/15: 22

Subtle

153,000 Tiny Air Bubbles

Instead of our usual bike ride and breakfast at Ridgecrest, we made a bagel run to Lexington this morning. Certainly not by bike, that’s over a hundred miles, we took the Emperor. On the way back, somewhere west of Red Bank, but not as far as Boiling Springs, let’s call it White Knoll, the Miata exceeded 153,000 miles since manufacture.

The new 4th generation Miata is going to have its A-pillars and windshield header be a gloss black, no matter what color the car is. The designers and/or Mazda marketing have stated the reason for this is to make the car appear visibly lower. That’s their story anyway. They aren’t the first to think of this idea either, the Honda S2000 came from the factory that way. And few folks on the Miata.net Forums have already done it on all three of the previous generations on their own. From the pictures I’ve seen, I don’t know about lower, but it does make the car look slightly different.

So after we got back from Lexington I bought a $20 stripe kit from Advance Auto and spent the rest of the morning into early afternoon carefully trimming and squeegeeing 153,000 tiny air bubbles out of one of the two 12′ stripes to do this to the Emperor. I can definitely see why it would cost a 3 to 4 grand to wrap a car and have it done right. I think this little project came out pretty decent for a first-timer, but hate to try anything more complex. The effect is subtle because of the car’s already dark color. Pictures tomorrow.

If anyone wants the other 12′ stripe it’s yours for the asking.

Listening Like It’s 1999

New Old Bose Radio

For the second time in two years I’ve bought a GROM AUX-IN Adapter for the Emperor. “Buy why Brian?”, you’re asking yourself, “Doesn’t your aftermarket Jensen HU play an SD card?”

It did. Well, it probably still does, it just doesn’t do it in the dash of the Miata anymore. The honeymoon with Jensen was short-lived. As a matter of fact it almost ended before it was even installed. One feature it had was pre-amp outputs, which were perfect for interfacing with the existing Bose amps, but they wouldn’t seem to work together. This prompted a trip to the local car audio store for a Scosche line leveler which would take the speaker level outputs and damp them down.

This worked real well and we had music, but I don’t know whether it was the rat’s nest of wiring that this combo created or the cheap Jensen radio, but there was always a high pitched whine in the background that’s sound varied along with the engine RPM. But the real killer was the display. No clock. The OEM radio had the option to always display the time and seeing as neither Donna nor I wear a watch we had become used to taking a quick glance and seeing the time. Oh, the Jensen had a clock, just no way to keep it on at all time. To get it to display the time all you had to do was take your eyes off the road to spot which one of the three buttons to the right of the center knob had the tiny little letters DISP on it and push with your finger. But you had to push it for just the right length of time to get it. Push it for too short a time and it paused the playback. Push it for too long a time and it would mute the sound. Donna never mastered it, so the job fell to me and after two years of practice I had about a 60% success rate of getting right the first time.

I’ve been looking for a replacement Bose radio on eBay for several months. Trouble is that The Emperor’s style radio was only available in the years 2002 & 2003 on the LS model. The 2004 & 2005 radios would work, but they had silver faces which would look a little odd in the car. They looked OK in the 04/05 cars because Mazda changed the whole center stack trim to silver faced stuff. I missed out on one unit that was Buy It Now for $100 by stewing in indecision a couple hours. Then a couple weeks ago one came up for $150 But It Now, but I didn’t want to spend that much. I bid $100. It went for $135 plus shipping to some one else. After work on Tuesday I noticed one come up for $59 + $15 for shipping. I bought it.

The only downside to this buy was it didn’t have the little black trim pieces that flank the radio and hide the removal holes. Who knows where I’ll be able to find those, but I’m willing to overlook those minor gaps because all I have to do is glance down and there the time will be.

Oh, the title, it refers to the cassette player that is at the bottom of the radio. It was an option, you could have added a mini-disc player or an MP3 player, but someone actually paid extra for a cassette deck.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 06/25/15: 19

Bank’s Lake National Wildlife Refuge

 

 

Lake number 9 of the 12 needed for the Moss Motoring Challenge turns out to be Banks Lake National Wildlife Refuge. The entry form calls for Sign Required and I’m betting quite a few will take the easy way out and just photograph a sign. Not us, we want to be able to see both the sign and the body of water it is calling out. You might be surprised just how difficult this is.

Started up, went down, back up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 06/25/15: 17

Fireworks!

Fireworks

On planning this weekend’s loop I ended us up on Saturday the 4th in the town of Waycross, GA. Kind of had to stop here because the distance from home was too far away to push it to finish up and it would leave Sunday the shortest mileage day which would get us home at a decent time.

Waycross had a Holiday Inn Express that we could stay at for free using our points And as a bonus, the hotel was under a mile from Memorial Stadium, where the city was having a concert and then later fireworks, in case we wanted to walk over closer to see them.

When I made the reservation I filled out the comments section with my usual “Top floor and away from the elevator/ice machine.” When checking in I asked what floor were we on and the person checking us in said, “Third.” I asked, “Nothing left on the fourth.” She claimed that they didn’t get my comments and there were a couple family reunions staying at the hotel that had blocked off a bunch of rooms. The CSR was really nice and helpful. She worked a little magic because we are Priority Club members and upgraded our room to a king suite that was open on the top floor.

Not only did we end up on the top floor where we wanted, but we lucked out and ended up on the side of the hotel that looked out towards where they were going to shoot off the fireworks. It was great, no heat, no humidity, no crowds of people and no mosquitoes. The only thing we missed out on was the synchronization of the boom and flashes.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 06/25/15: 14

Not As Noisy

That's ThreeYesterday’s bouncing bolt was not the only thing the Emperor tried to eat on the drive home. For the second time in the last two months the mouth of the Miata has swallowed a bird.

This time Donna was at the wheel and I didn’t even notice the impact at all. We were heading north on US301 and quickly running out of Georgia when she calmly mentions, “I just hit a bird.” Sure enough after we crossed the Savannah River into South Carolina we stopped to change drivers and discovered a decent size female cardinal plastered against the mesh grill.

Donna pointed out that this bird was likely bigger than the one I hit in May. “OK,” I said, “You win the biggest bird trophy, but I’m still ahead 2 to 1 in quantity standings.”

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 06/25/15: 12