Most Likely For The Last Time

We went away for the weekend to Hilton Head. Most likely for the last time.

Way back in 1997 when a shop supervisor was wondering aloud to his production planner how to list his and some other owners condos for rent on the internet, a side hustle for yours truly was born. The supervisor was Jerry, the planner was my wife Donna and because I was dabbling in coding HTML she volunteered me.

Jerry and I hashed out a simple design for a front page with just a sub page for each individual condo. It started small, with just his condo and a few others of owners he had befriended. Over the next couple of years Jerry would add a few more condos as word spread. He and his wife Donna would go down to HHI from Aiken practically every weekend remodeling places and his business of managing condos took off.

In 1999 Jerry retired and he and Donna moved down to Hilton Head and at its peak they managed a couple dozen condos in the one complex and they personally owned three of them. All the while me and my Donna were going down a couple three times a year to take pictures for updating the web site. We always got comped a weekend in a condo and always a nice dinner out. What started as an acquaintance and business relationship had blossomed into friendship.

When Jerry the Condo King passed away in 2007 at the age of 71 his wife continued on with the business. And for the past dozen years Donna the Condo Queen has continued our, at least, yearly trips down for web page updating. But because it was just her doing the managing, the booking and some of the cleaning, the 25 condos has slowly dwindled down to nine. This summer Donna, having turned that same 71 years old, has decided it is time to smell some roses and will no longer be managing condos starting January 2020.

With no real web page updating left to do, other than a thanks for the business place holder page, and our possible move to Oregon, we went down for one last free weekend in an ocean front condo on the beach and a nice meal and visit with Donna the, soon to no longer be, Condo Queen.

We are not beach people at all and probably would have never set foot on Hilton Head Island at all1, but we will be eternally grateful to Jerry and Donna for giving us the opportunity over the last twenty-two years to watch the sunrise over the Atlantic. To walk along the wide sandy, usually uncrowded, beaches. To watch the dolphins frolic in the surf and the pelicans glide gracefully overhead. And most of all we will remember fondly the joy of their company.

Dead Woofer

Last night, Donna calls out to me to say, “Hey, I can’t get any sound out of the TV.” Well the first thing I thought of I might of knocked a plug out of the power strip. I was behind the TV a little while previous to see how come our vertical blinds can’t be opened fully. You can open the two halves to the ends fine, but the rotation of the vanes gets stuck at about 75 degrees. That is really fine with us, but the prospective next owner of this house might have an issue. Well, whatever is wrong2 it wasn’t readily evident.

I followed the power cord down to the strip and it was plugged in. The first troubleshooting step with electronics is to reboot, so I yanked out the cord. Dang, wrong one. I pulled out the Cable/TIVO box cord. So I had to sit contemplating my stupidity for 5 minutes while that rebooted. Unplugged the right cord, and plugged it back in and still no sound. Using the TV remote I changed back to the TV’s speakers to make sure that wasn’t the problem. It wasn’t. Next step is to get out the instructions for the VISIO sound bar. Turns out there is a setting on that remote to reset to everything to the default setting. After that I used the speaker test setting to see whether I was getting anywhere.

“Left Speaker”________________________”Center Speaker”_________________________”Right Speaker”

Then silence, no sub woofer and no rear surround speakers. The sub is connected to the sound bar via bluetooth, so the manual suggested that I try to re-pair the two. You have to press a button on the back of the sub down for 5 seconds, a small light would start blinking. You then go to the bar and hold the power button for 5 seconds. The lights on the sound bar would flash back and forth until the two units hooked up. Problem was the sub woofer light never came on. Turned the sub off and back on. Tried the pairing routine again and once again the sub never lit. It was pronounced dead at 7:17 PM on August 20, 2019.

Although I bet it was electrocuted dead way back in April when the house power was abruptly disconnected. We didn’t notice because we rarely watch anything that has surround sound. So for now we we are going to go with the just the sound bar.

Masters Miata Club Bug Splat

This is a word for word cross posting of my write-up on the Club’s Website…

This is not an actual photo of the number of cars that showed up to kill bugs, but it felt that way to the organizers…who at the start were way too busy handing out dot stickers and route maps and removing any previous bug splats off the noses of cars and then again at the end with judging and handing out prizes to take any photos, so if you did take pictures, could you kindly email them to masters.miata.club@gmail.com, so I can add them to this post.

When: Saturday, August 17, 2019
Where: Greg’s Gas Plus, Sonic and the dark back roads of South Carolina in between
Attending: Sarah Acord, Donna & Brian Bogardus, Don & Kaye Boltz, Ellie & David Brock, Pat Charlotte, Shirley & Mike Dyer, Brenda Hays & Guest3, Glen Link & Deb Tonini, Dennis & Karol Mason, Trudy & Hal Scott, Stacey & Cindy Timmerman, Margie & Bill Vandermaas, Ralf & Annie Wilms and Sue & Dave Woomer.

There were 3 cars already parked in the usual spot by the time we arrived at Greg’s Gas Plus.4 And soon after Miatas started rolling in. And rolling in. And rolling in. Quickly we filled the left side of the parking lot. They still kept coming and now they were lined up in a double row on the left side of the building. It has been a few years since we have had this large a turnout. Departure time was set for 8:15 and just about the time everyone were heading towards their cars to leave, an 18-wheeled behemoth inched its way into the parking lot to fill up the business’s gas tanks leaving barely room for the first 4 or 5 cars to get out.

Consequently, when we did leave, where we normally lead the troops, Donna and I ended up about car number #4. Cars #5 & 6 were not too far behind us, but after that the next 8 had to wait a bit to leave the start point as random OTMs5 came along on SC230. We were not too worried as I had gone over the route with several people and we did hand out a copy of the map for the technical 6 right turn route. When the light rain started after about 10 miles of the first leg, most everyone shrugged it off, but it started to come down a little harder as each of the next few miles were driven. When we got to the turn onto SC23 we caught car #2 with it’s roof up already and could see car #3 pulled over and raising theirs. A little further down the road we found the lead car pulled over and car #2 pulled over with them. So now Donna and I were in our usual spot, in front, with the rest of the 13 cars stretched back beyond our visible horizon. About then the rain tapered off to nothing and nearly all the folks who stopped to put their tops up, just left them up rather than stop again.

The rain, besides the damp car interiors and occupants, had little effect on the overall outcome of the Bug Splatting Contest because it seems that most of the insects came out of hiding after the rain stopped. At turn No. 4 onto Sweetwater in Car #10, the Timmermans, noticed that the cars ahead of him continued on straight. I guess the lead car of that, as it turns out 4 car group, either missed my briefing or didn’t look at the map or both and they all went the more pedestrian and 2 mile longer route to end up at the Sonic with everyone else.

The big, and I mean literally big, winners of the night were the Dyers as they claimed the beautiful Biggest Bug Trophy to take home with them. There were a couple other cars who had very similar sized splats on the front, but Mike & Shirley also had a quarter-sized, still twitching, partially flattened mayfly on the lower bumper which put them over the top. Glenn and Deb earned the Fewest Bug honors by arriving at the finish with as clean a car as when they started and if I didn’t know it was impossible, I would swear they must have activated a Star Trek-like front shield. The Vandermaas’s, er, Vandermaases, oh never mind, Margie and Bill did a direct flight path crossing with a formation of miniature housefly looking insects to take home the Most Bugs prize. Trudy and Hal Scott were awarded the Closest to the Dot prize for there own squashed mayfly that was within a couple inches of their green Avery dot.

Because the Rally Masters had a little bit too much fun in the Dollar Store there were also four Door Prizes up for grabs for the rest of the folks who didn’t claim any of the “major” prizes of the night. The Timmermans took home a pack of edible glowing worms.6 The Boltzes left with a wooden 3-D puzzle of a spider that they didn’t have before. The Brocks were the lucky recipients of a Matchbox-sized Chip Foose modified VW Beetle. And Ms. Acord received a possible cheat for a biggest bug win next year with a prize that consisted of life-size plastic Palmetto Bug dining on a fried egg.7

Everyday Driver Bingo

So for practically every Tuesday and Friday morning walks since sometime in May I have been rocking the Everyday Driver Podcast on my walks. So that is around two dozen hours of listening to these two guys talk cars. They also have a show that runs on Motortrend TV first, before ending up on Amazon Prime, so I have been watching those when they air and the old ones on Amazon, so there have been about 28 episodes of that I’ve seen. They also have a YouTube Channel with a literal crap ton of videos, of which I’ve watched a bunch of.

Needless to say, I am familiar with their work. The other day while walking and listening to a podcast I had a crazy idea. But I then quickly realized my database skills are not as good as I thought, so all I managed to create was my one demo. I emailed it to them at their gmail address and told them to feel free to run with this idea and sell ’em on their Amazon Store.

Track, Daily, Crush

Enough of the one marquee/theme TDC’s, let’s do a regular one. As of Monday, August 12, 2019 at 9:00 PM eastern time:

Track Daily Crush
1956 Lotus Eleven Le Mans 1966 Volkswagen Bus 1964 Fiat 600D
I don’t know actually how aerodynamic this really is, but it sure looks slippery as an eel. I’d pay several thousand bucks just to have a 6′ wide print of this bus for a living room wall. After looking at all the photos attached to the auction I fully believe this car has no good angle.

Wrangler Wrap Up

Instead of just hosing the Rubicon off, I actually gave it a proper washing. I also cleaned off the the Weather Tech rubber mats along with vacuuming it out. Even though I am 6′ tall and have fairly long arms, I had to go inside the house to bring out the 2-Step Steel Folding Step Stool Ladder to get the roof clean. 🙂

If I have one complaint with my experience with Crazy Dave’s Rental Cars, it is, it would have been nice when renting to someone whose car had shut off inexplicably leaving him stranded on the side of the road twice in the last couple weeks that the vehicle he would now be driving had a stop/start system. The first time it happened was a heart fluttering moment. So, in spite of that little hiccup, I will be giving Crazy Dave’s a 5 star rating, because where else can you rent a new Jeep Wrangler Rubicon for 2 days with unlimited mileage for the cost of a half a tank of gas.

Stray observations in no particular order:

  1. It is a chore to drive on straight roads. There is a ton of play (compared to the Miata) in the steering wheel at top center making it a full time job. It does feel good in curves though with the wheel turned some, all the slack is gone.
  2. It is a half a foot wider and a foot longer than a Miata, but I quickly figured where my corners were and felt comfortable driving in traffic.
  3. It had the government mandated backup camera, but even with the hard top on the all around visibility was excellent.
  4. The way high seating position was really nice in certain spots, especially when leaving parking lots and entering streets. Other vehicles and street-side landscaping were much easier to see over.
  5. I don’t know specifically what our gas mileage was for the 100-125 miles we put on the Jeep, but the running average for it showed 19 MPG. This is only 2/3rds of the Miata’s 28 and only slightly over half of the Mini’s 36. The cost is somewhat offset by the fact that the Jeep uses regular grade gas compared the the Miata’s & Mini’s premium.
  6. The low beam headlights included in the LED Lighting Group Package nearly make the high beams redundant. In my few miles behind the wheel at night it didn’t seem like the highs gave you much more down the road visibility, the only thing it seemed to do was light up the trees.
  7. It was nice to have the satellite radio, so I could catch up with what was playing on The Coffee House channel compared to 8 years ago when we had it free for a year with the Purple Whale. While that channel is as close as I can get to Radio Paradise, it is definitely not worth the $15 a month they want for the service.

That’s enough for now, I’m sure I’m forgetting a few things, but our experience with our extended test drive hasn’t made us want to go right out and buy a Jeep, but neither has it totally dissuaded us from buying one either.