Year: 2025

Mojo

Way back in the early 90’s Donna and I added mountain biking to our cycling CV and we both bought a Bridgestone MB-4. As you can tell if you’ve hung around here long enough, you know I like the modify things I own to express my me-ness. The first things I did to the bike is I threw a bright pink seat and matching handlebar tape on it. I also glued a little blue and pink gecko to my top tube in what was referred to as a Mojo in the mountain biking community.

A decade or so later I added a Mojo to Miata #3, that we named The Emperor because compared to the high mileage Miata #2 we traded in on it, this car was Regal. It was the LS or top of the Miata lineup and came with leather seats and a cloth top. The maroon-ish color with tan interior added to its high class feel as well. I bought a little Hasbro Emperor Palpatine figure and double stick taped it to the car’s dash.

Fast forward 2-1/2 decades later and now I own Miata #6 that has earned the nickname Bucky for two reasons which you can read about it here. The other day in Klamath Falls I wanted to wash the road gunk off Miata #5, so I went over to the local Dollar Tree looking for some small towels to use at the hand car wash. I found a couple of “Microfiber” ones for a dollar (and a quarter) each. Whenever I’m in one of these stores I always check out the miniature action figures to see if they have anything cool.

Surprisingly, they still had a bunch of The Incredible figures on the hooks because I bought a set of all 5 characters way back 5 years ago when we lived in K-Falls. I found a DC Comics figure of Black Adam that I opted to buy for Bucky’s Mojo. When I got back home, I shrunk down the logo for that gas station place and glued it to Black Adam’s chest. Tomorrow I’ll stick Buc-ee Man on the dash.

Lien On Me

I took out a loan for the New Blue Miata, made three payments (Oct,Nov,Dec) and two days after the December payment I paid off the rest of it. And I waited for my Title to show up in the mail. By the end of January, it still hadn’t arrived. I decided to check the loan account online to make sure it said paid in full, and it did. At the bottom of the page, I noticed a small line of text, “To request a lien removal letter, click here.” And I did. On the next page I was told the letter would take 5 to 7 business days to get to me. Huh? Any other time I had financed a vehicle they just sent it to you automatically.

I promptly went on a month-long adventure to Santa Fe and Hammond, LA with a friend and forgot all about Oregon and the Miata and the lien letter thing. Somewhere around the middle of February I went back online and clicked the link again. I gave it 2 weeks in regular days and still no letter. This time I dialed up Chase Auto Finance and got on a phone conversation with a human.

We ran through the details only to find that the dealer who sold me the car left off the ‘Unit 1’ part of the end of 21100 NE Sandy Blvd. While on the phone with me the CSR steered me to the right place to correct the address. I thanked him and hung up. I had to delete the incorrect address and add the correct one. I gave it a few days to get inside their system and clicked the link asking for the lien letter for the third time.

On business day eleven with no letter in my mail box, I call again. Same routine with a CSR as last time, check details and it turns out when I entered my own address in the account, I entered 2110 instead of the 21100. Duh! This time the CSR changed it for me and made me repeat my address a couple times just to make sure I knew what my address is. She told me that I didn’t need to click the link she would get one out in the mail today so it would get to me right away, well, 5 to 7 business days away.

The elusive lien letter arrived today via FedEx. When I opened up the envelope there were two lien letters in there, one dated 12/30/24 and another dated 2/27/25. I thought they would spit out a digital copy of what was on file, but no, someone dug around in a physical file cabinet in Monroe, Louisiana and sent me the actual 2 letters they tried to send me, but got returned.

I’m A Poker Player

A few weeks ago, at the Coffee and Donuts thing at the Community Center one of the residents told me that they were starting a friendly $5 buy in poker game on Wednesdays and she asked me if I was interested. I think she was trying to mother me a bit, because not long after Donna died, she said maybe I should start a widower club and meet for coffee once a week somewhere. She even had a couple names of fellows that found themselves in my situation recently.

I said maybe I’ll try and make it to her invitation for poker. The following Wednesday I thought about and didn’t think I would be interested, so didn’t go. She asked me again at the next Friday Social and I said I had forgotten, so I asked for the details again and actually put Wednesday, 2:00 PM in my calendar in front of her. And I was going to go play, but the Amazon delivery of my laptop got shifted from Tuesday to Wednesday. It was coming via UPS and a signature was required. So, of course the time frame I got was 12:45PM to 4:45PM. If it arrived early, I’d go. At a little before 2 o’clock I walked up to the Community Center to tell them why I wouldn’t be able to play. Delivery finally happened at 5:45.

So today, I walked up and paid my $5 and spent a little over an hour playing poker. And this was actually the first time I have played. In the Navy it was always Hearts or some form of Rummy. I’m sure there was poker being played somewhere on the ship, but I never got in a game. The $5 thing is just to start you off and you get four denominations of chips, half dollar, quarter, dime and nickel, but if you feel frisky you can pull bills out of your pocket. Nobody ever threw a five spot in as a bet but, they did get used to be thrown in and then 3-4 dollars in chips taken back out. At one point I won a big pot with a portrait of Honest Abe in it, I promptly put it in my pocket.

When I did finally lose all my chips, I said I was done and left the game. So, I broke even for the day and have next week’s buy in all set.

Sport, Off-Road, Touring

Special Tuesday Edition of SORT
As of Tuesday, April 8, 2025 at 9:00 PM pacific time:

Sport Off-Road Touring
2006 BMW
M3 Coupe		 1994 Land Rover
Defender 90		 2015 Maserati GranTurismo Sport
Not really special, it is just that I totally spaced on the fact that yesterday was Monday. An after the long drive back from Klamath Falls I just wanted to go to bed. It was not any longer in distance, but I did manage to avoid traveling on any of I-5 to get home, so more time was involved. I also killed an hour or so at the High Desert Museum south of Bend.

Here is what last week’s cars sold for, or bid to (if the reserve was not met):
Sport: 2013 Chevrolet Corvette Sold for USD $61,000 on 4/4/25
Off-Road: 2019 Chevrolet Colorado Bid to USD $22,500 on 4/2/25
Touring: 2021 Chevrolet Express Sold for USD $45,000 on 04/05/25

Quest Complete

If haven’t already seen today’s Insta post, I was able to earn the coveted, Brevada Brewhouse supplied, Mixed Berry Smoothie Bowl. Damn, worth every mile. It was just as I remembered.

The first part of the journey home was all gray clouds and random sprinkles. As soon as we hit the mountains the gray clouds disappeared behind a thick mist and enough rains drops to simulate a milky shower curtain. Inexplicably, in one valley between the peaks the downpour stopped for 2 or 3 miles before coming back with a vengeance. Back at a couple hundred feet above sea level it went to broken clouds with some sprinkles.

Here are a couple of today’s Miata photos. First up, is a reminder how prevalent wildfires are in Oregon.

And secondly, a picture of how fertile the Willamette Valley is.

Back To K-Falls

I am back again for the second time in the span of a week for one thing, a Breakfast Smoothie Bowl from Brevada Brewhouse tomorrow morning. That is the reason why I came last weekend too, but Brevada is closed Sunday, so I was going get it on Monday morning, but the impending snow in the mountains made me leave early. I feel like this smoothie bowl has became a Quixotic Quest.

Because when Donna and I left Klamath Falls for Fairview, I sold the CBTNL to David, the co-owner of Brevada, he had promised me a free smoothie bowl whenever the next time I got to Klamath Falls. So, by my reckoning, this free treat will have set me back approximately $460. Three hotel rooms at $100, only 2 of which I will have used, and 4 full tanks of gas at around $40 each.

But it isn’t really about the money because I would have had to cross the Eastern Cascades a few times anyway for taking the post office photos I’ve taken while coming here twice. There were 6 last weekend and I picked up 8 on the way over today. With a chance at 5 more on the way back.

P.S. The Sisters Post Office (lower left) officially put me over the halfway point of the other Quixotic Quest I’m on, taking a picture of every Post Office in Oregon.

Pull Caffé Run

My second Run with the Mt Hood Miata Club took me into the wilds of southern Washington with a dozen or so Miatas and one Fiat 124 Spider (AKA: Fiata.) What they call a Run is what we called a Rally back in the Masters Miata Club realm.

We met in a Home Depot parking lot in Vancouver, WA and if you’ve ever been in a Home Depot parking lot on a Saturday morning you would know just how out of place our little roadsters were. Our destination today was a small specialty coffee roaster in the wilds of Clark County. Pull Caffé’s address is listed as in the town of Yacolt, but I didn’t see anything resembling a town. On a side note, Yacolt is derived from the Klickitat word “Yahkohtl,” meaning “haunted place” or “place of (evil) spirits”, so good thing it was daytime.

Pull Caffé’s opening time on Saturday is noon, but we had arranged to arrive at 11 so we could get the nickel tour before the hoi polloi. Very interesting place, they started out as a woodfired coffee roaster but branch into making woodfired pizza and in a brick oven and then added baking sourdough bread in there too. The coffee roaster they use is literally the oldest one on the planet. When the owner found the German made roaster for sale in Bulgaria he was told it was used in the 30’s. When he got it installed he discovered it might have been used then, but it was built in the 1800s!

Another reason to be there early was because the first Saturday of the month is the only time they sell the bread and it draws a crowd from around the area. I snagged a loaf and I’ve got two thirds of it in the freezer because it is going to take a while for me to devour something the size of my head.

After leaving the coffee and pizza and bread makers behind we headed back south for lunch at the Prairie Tavern with a stop at the scenic Lucia Falls for a leg stretch.