I Wonder

Last night Donna and I went out to get some pizza at Apizza di Napoli. The owner has made it his mission to make the most authentic Neapolitan pizza possible. The oven is built to the correct specifications and he choses his ingredients so that the restaurant can stay certified by the actual Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana.

We do love the wood fired pizza with the light crust and fresh taste. But we hate the service set up1, it is unlike we have ever run into before. You enter through the front door, you are greeted at the counter, escorted to a table and handed menus. So far so good, you then get instructed to read over the menu and once you have decided you return to the front to order and pay. When the food is ready they will bring it to your table. In the beginning after paying they pointed along the side wall and told you that is where you should pick up your plates, silverware and napkins.

At least now the plates are brought to you when they bring the food and the silverware and napkins are already on the table. Because a lot of people would not bring the menus back up to the counter when they ordered, they have attached a little sign to the napkin holders to remind them. Donna looked at the sign and said, “Shouldn’t that say please be kind and return the menus?” I looked at it for a second, a light bulb illuminated above my head and replied, “Nope, that is the owner being cute.” “This place used to be a movie rental place back in the last century.”

I wonder how many customers get the reference?

25 Years Ago – Winter 1992

Below is the back page from the Winter 1992 Miata Magazine. I looked through the whole issue looking for just the right thing to add here, and while included the usual stuff, letters with questions, a camparo with a 1959 Mercedes Benz 190SL, a Club Chapter spotlight (Tar Heel), it seemed like there were actually more ads than content. So here you have just some of the fancy things you could buy for your Miata way back at the end of 1992.

Click on the image to get a bigger view. You can then enlarge the pop-up image to a much larger size by clicking on the symbol at the upper left to bask in all the glory of early 90’s goodness. Like a Coil Cellular Look Antenna, so you can pretend you had one of those big ticket mobile phone things.

Some of these things were actually very useful and within a few years were built into the car by Mazda, like the trunk shield and door sill protectors. A few were worthwhile like the window sandwicher to protect the easily scratched vinyl back window and the rear deck bags to practically double the trunk space for long road trips.

One of the first things I did buy for the front of my first Miata was one of the black mesh grills. I still run one today and it has protected the A/C condenser coil from innumerable leaves, grasshoppers and 2 low flying birds. As a bonus, it looks better than the open mouth on the NA & NB. Plus, I am almost embarrassed to admit, I bought a pair of those black leather driving gloves too.

Saturday in the Swamp


Saturday morning we headed out to get a few last minute Motoring Challenge points. We got a Haberdashery, Sorority/Fraternity, a Natures Giant and a Hero/Villain for 4 big points. This is the second time we have taken a photo of the sign at the entrance to the Congaree Swamp. This year we are using it for Nature’s Giant, but in 2014 it counted for a point as a National Park.

We now have 233 points out of a possible 257. Of the 24 remaining points, if we are lucky and diligent, we will get eight of those. Even if we managed to snag all 24, we still might not end up in the top 3 anyway. Some folks may have a higher possible total because of the scrabble points, those that find 3 words that total more than our 92 points would finish ahead of us.

Curiosity Satisfied

The Mini is Donna’s daily driver and it is extensively “her” car, but sometimes when we run to the store on weeknights or on weekends she’ll let me drive it. It is kind of like a luxury Miata with a hardtop and it is not unenjoyable to drive. Sometimes I think maybe it is time to ditch the Miata and become a two Mini family, one for her that we leave alone and one for me I can add different wheels, sticky tires, a slightly noisy exhaust, etc., etc.

On the route of my normal drive to and from the Valve Store I pass a Bail Bonds office (the county jail is about 2 miles further up the road.) They often have a used car or two sitting out front. I imagine it is something they have taken as bond and the person subsequently skipped town. About a month ago, they added a 1st generation Mini Cooper S to the 1989 Camaro Z28, a 90’s vintage Camry, an 18′ fishing boat and a small backhoe. It is Electric Blue with a white roof, mirrors and hood stripes with a sunroof and looks just like this only without the driving lights. Every time I pass by it, I think, “Man that is neat looking little car.” After a half dozen or so passes I started to wonder how much they wanted for that thing, knowing that unless it was under fifty bucks Donna would not let me bring it home like some stray puppy, although the thing is as cute as one.

Well, last week I gave them a call, just to see what they wanted for it. A woman answered the phone and said, “I didn’t know anything about the stuff for sale out front. Donnie2 does, but he doesn’t come in until around ten.” I said, “I’ll try back then.” Forgot all about it later. Remembered on the drive home when I passed by, too late. When I saw it the following day I told myself I’d call around 11. When I did, the same lady said, “Oh you missed him, he just left to apprehend someone.” After that I told myself that that was an omen and to forget about the car. And I did.

Until this past Monday on my way to work. It was still there. Now I’m thinking it is just taunting me and that’s like a 15-yard penalty in the NFL now. I started to rationalize that I might be able to get Donna to let me buy it if it was in real nice shape, had around 70 or 80-thousand miles on it and was like only three thousand bucks. I had to run an errand mid-day on Wednesday this week and my return trip to work just happened to take me right by the bail bonds place. So, I stopped in.

When I entered the building, there was the phone answering woman. I asked if someone who know anything about the Mini Cooper that was out front. She shouted, “Tom!”3 When Tom came out from the back I asked him what year, how much and how many miles. He replied, “2005, $5,000 and I’m not sure. Let me get the key and we’ll go out and look.” I’m thinking 2005 sounds nice (2nd to last year of the 1st gen, so everything would be all sorted out) and $5,000 sounds high, but I have no clue, so internet research will be required. I grab a business card and a pen from the counter as we head outside because I want to write down the VIN so I can see the configuration it came with from the factory. When he opens the driver’s door to get in I get a peek inside and the first doubt starts to materialize through the fog of desire. I see the VIN sticker on the door jamb and I’m copying it down when he calls the mileage out to me as one hundred sixty-five thousand three hundred and twenty-six. Jason with a bloody kitchen knife just appeared from nowhere. I almost drop the pen, but hold on long enough to finish writing the last 4 digits.

He asks if I want to sit in it and to finish being polite I do, (it is not running right now because the coolant overflow tank is cracked and will be replaced) but there is no way I would buy this even if Donna had given me $5k that morning and said go get it. It had leather sport seats and while the leather wasn’t worn out or torn anywhere, it was sloppy loose on the cushions, you could still see the impressions of Tom’s butt who had just got out of it. Plus, remember back when we first bought Donna’s Mini, I posted photos of a side by side comparisons of the dashboards and said that it hadn’t changed that much since the 2003 we didn’t like? Well the dash in conjunction with the overly busy looking door panels made the inside very unappealing, I can see why we didn’t like the looks back in 2003.

Curiosity satisfied.

Scratch-Scratch-Scratch-Scratch- Scratch-Scratch-Scratch- Scratch-Scratch-Scratch

Tuesday’s Miata noise wasn’t the only strange noise I encountered that day.

Sitting on the couch, waiting to see if my Spin ID was selected and a contestant on Wheel of Fortune would become my Secret Santa, we heard an odd noise from, what sounded like, the dishwasher. It was a very rhythmic sort of a cross between a rumbling, a knock and the sound of a high pressure spray drumming on something as it rotated. Donna jumped up, opened the dishwasher and removed a cookie tray in there that looked like a possibility. She started the dishwasher back up and came back into the living room. No sooner had she sat down, the noise started over.

This time we both got up. About halfway to the kitchen we realized that the noise was coming from the back hallway, that connects the bedrooms. Careful listening led us to the floor at the the entrance to the middle bedroom. The sound was now recognizable as scratching and it sounded quite loud and urgent. Pounding on the floor near there would make the sound stop, but not for long. It sounded like something trying to get in. It would be loud scratching for a couple minutes then stop for a couple minutes.

I have one of the high powered bicycle headlights and went outside to investigate. I checked all the crawl space vents to see if they were still in place, they were. Next I opened up the door to the crawl space, poked my head in and aimed the beam in the direction of the noise, I could see nothing. I didn’t dare go in any further, fearing I’d run into a rabid possum or a raccoon or maybe a wolverine. I returned in the house and reported my findings. She said, “I’ll call the pest control people and have them come out and look.” We thought for a while we would have to sleep in the bedroom on the other side of the house because the scratching was fairly loud, but by 11:00 PM it had totally stopped. The pest control people couldn’t make it until today, but that was alright because the sound never reappeared. But we still wanted to know if the claw monsters were still lurking under there, or if they had gone, how much damage had they done trying to escape.

The pest guy showed up, and like me, walked around the house looking at the vents, but unlike me, he actually went under the house to look around. His report was that he could find no indication of any wayward creatures under there. He then said, “Let me look in the attic.” This time, when he came back, he had a different result. “Probably what you heard was a baby squirrel or a small flying squirrel or maybe a field mouse that fell down between the sheet rock of this short wall here.” “I know it sounded louder than a small animal, but the sound was just amplified by the chamber.” He handed us his card and said, “If you hear the scratching again, call me on my cell. But more than likely, whatever it was has died and you probably won’t even know anything about it.”

Tick-Tick-Tick-Tick-Tick-Tick-Tick-Tick-Tick

About a mile from home on my way to work Tuesday, out of the blue, there came a ticking sound from the passenger side of the CTBNL. It was a high frequency sound tick, loud, but not enough to drown out every other normal driving noise and occurring at about 2 or 3 times a second. The steering felt fine and I had no warning lights. I put my hand on the seat, the dashboard, the transmission and nothing was vibrating, As I slowed for the next cross street to pull over, the sound didn’t change, so not speed dependent. When I pushed in the clutch in, the sound once again remained constant, so no engine or transmission. Hmmm.

I stopped, left the car running and stepped outside. I could still hear the ticking, it was less loud and coming from the area around the windshield / hood on the passenger side. A long inactive synapse tingled, I was now pretty sure I knew what it was. I got back in the car and turned the HVAC fan from 1 to 0. The ticking stopped.

I just left the fan off for the rest of the commute. When I got home I pulled the car into the garage (baby, it was cold outside) where I removed the glove box and laid on my back in passenger side with my feet out the door to take out the three screws that hold the motor up. Somehow a tenacious live oak leaf had found its way into the cowl area, under a plastic cover, then up and over a 1-1/2″ metal dam and through a loose mesh screen to fall into the fan motor. That 3″ long intact leaf wasn’t the only thing in the fan either, but it was the noise maker. I also pulled out a couple of small acorn pieces, a couple of small broken leaf pieces, several strands of pine straw and a lot of dust that through centripetal force and the design of fan had been wedged into the very bottom.

Man Flu

Big news today is that there is such a thing as “Man Flu.” The term was coined for men who present with mild flu-like symptoms but who complain of feeling much worse than they appear. A Canadian researcher found that men are actually more susceptible to complications from many respiratory diseases and our immune systems may be naturally weaker towards them than women.

I don’t know about respiratory, but my version of the Man Flu is more like I can’t leave a car alone in stock form. I have a compulsion to add, subtract and modify them until I think they are just right. Donna puts up with it with the Miata, but she has told me in no uncertain terms to leave the Mini alone.

Because the online forums are a great place to learn about the car I joined the North American Motoring one. I’ve used it, so far, to figure what battery to buy, what the heck the Sport Button really does, how come the windshield wiper blades are so different and other stuff. The problem with the forums are they are chock full of men like me who have modified their Minis and I can’t help be exposed to them. There are some that I see and think, “Oooh, that’s cool,” and then think about it for a minute more, visualize it, then think, “Naaah.”

Here is an example. In the center of the black bottom grill of Ladybug is chrome horizontal bar. There I guess to somewhat echo the chrome grill above. I think it looks weird and some folks have painted it black or covered it in black tape. In the same thread someone else posted a picture of where they had painted theirs red. So I thought, let’s go to Paint Shop Pro and do some mock ups. First is how it looks stock, then blacked out, then red. I even tried blue and green, but in the end, the way it came from the factory is best.