Top Transitions

I bought a Miata in part because it is a convertible. For the first 20 years of owning one, it was our only car, so it was a daily driver and a weekend toy. Because of Aiken, South Carolina’s weather we would frequently put the top down for the drive to work, have to put it up while at work only to put it down for the drive home. We’d go to the store with the top down and if the sky looked iffy we’d put it back up. Sometimes the top would go up or down a half dozen times in a day. The Miata’s vinyl tops became like sticky tires, they were consumables. We probably averaged a new top every 4 years.

Back in 2005 I decided to keep track of how often I put the top up or down in a given year for fun. Each day when I blogged, at the end of the post, I add a little entry at the bottom that looked like below:

 
In 2005 the top moved one direction or another almost 400 times, in 2006 524 times, in 2007 a little over 500 times. In 2008 it changed status nearly 400 times before it was replaced in October. I did a little interpolation and figured that the cloth top on the 2003 transitioned 2,235 times until it was replaced. I started counting again from there and kept the count rolling until I quit counting inexplicably at the end of September 2013 at 1262 transitions.

Now that we are retired and living in the less temperate climate of southern Oregon the Mini has become our primary car and the Miata gets taken out only occasionally. And until then, it sits in the garage with the top down practically always, so counting top transitions would not be worth it.

Instead, for 2022, I’ve decided to just count the times the Miata gets driven. From now on when it does go somewhere, I’ll be adding a footnote to the post. Today, with the roads finally cleared of snow from our last storm, I unhooked the trickle charger and picked up our to go lunch order.