17,000 Square Inches of Leather

About a month ago I talked of buying leather seats and since then I have placed a set of them in the shopping cart at GoMiata.com…twice…and couldn’t pull the trigger (or click the buy button.)

The first time I did it, I paused just before clicking. I had looked at the image they have on the site and thought I needed to order the body style, but the ordering page said it was unavailable for my vintage Miata. Unsure what to actually order, I called the folks at GoMiata and asked. Turns out that I needed to order the combo style.

The second time was the next day, now knowing what to order (combo style, black with smoke perforated inserts, black stitching and no piping), I paused just before clicking again. The total, with $75 for shipping, came to a nickle less than $700. And I still needed $30 minimum to get the hog ring pliers with some rings, so it was starting to sound like real money and I just couldn’t drop my forefinger that last inch.

Besides, we could really use that $700 towards something else made of leather. Our just shy of 5-year old living room couch looked like leather when new (its not), but now the faux leather outer layer is separating from the polyester base fabric. We’ve tried to extend its life span some by covering the cracks with some tape. Not silver duct tape like Martin Crane’s recliner on Frasier, but by using some Realistic Red Brown Leather Repair Tape. That repair tape is pretty good looking, but unfortunately it is not flexible enough to withstand being sat on.

Today we got in the Mini and hightailed it over to Augusta to buy us a real leather couch from Ashley Furniture. It is very similar in color and look to our current shedding couch, so it fit right our living room. Plus it will fit right in our horse town because right there in the description it says it has “equestrian style.” We opted to call this our Christmas present and splurged by buying the power reclining model. No more having to awkwardly pull at a handle to pop up the footrests, no more having to forceably push down & back to get it to latch closed and we can stop the recline at any angle we want.

Sometime on Saturday, on a different trip to Augusta, the Landybug, which has Carbon Black Leatherette seating, flew past 17,000 miles on her odometer.

After The Beep

I had just really settled into my desk at work, it was couple minutes after 7:00 AM, and the desk phone rang. I glanced at the display and saw an 803 (SC) area code, followed by an entirely unfamiliar 7 digits, so I ignored it. I figured, wrong number, or if it was for me, they’d leave a message. No message.

Just after I had finished my sandwich at lunchtime, my cell phone started vibrating. I picked it up, flipped it over and saw a 706 (GA) area code, followed by an entirely unfamiliar 7 digits, so I ignored it. I figured, wrong number, or if it was for me, they’d leave a message. A couple seconds later the phone buzzed once, ah, a message. The Cricket visual voice mail app said, “Cannot display message.” I looked at the time the message used up, 1 second, so, no, no message.

I was just putting the cell phone back down when the desk phone rang. I glanced at the display and saw the same 706 number that had just called the cell phone. One ring and it stopped. No message again.

Spam? Scam? or just Shy?

Miles and Miles and Miles

Yesterday’s anniversary got me thinking about just how many miles we’ve been in a Miata.

The original 1990 “Smurf” blue car racked up 108 thousand miles in five years before we traded it in for a new 1995 Miata. The 1995 traveled 128 thousand miles in 8 years of ownership before being traded in on a new 2003 Miata. That car stayed in the family for 13 years traveling 165,000 miles. We’ve owned the current 2002 Miata for a little more than a year and have driven it 11,000 miles. All those numbers total up to 412,000 miles of Miata fun in 28 years. Wow.

Four hundred twelve thousand divided by 28 equals almost 15,000 miles a year and at that rate we’ll reach a half a million Miata miles in the year 2023. But on further examination the trend line for Miles Per Year (MPY)is falling off. The first 5 years the average was over 21,600 MPY, the second 8 years was 16,000 MPY, the third 13 years worked out to be 12.7k MPY and for this car it is down to a under 9,000 MPY, so it might not be until 2027 we get to 500,000 miles.

Maybe I’ll start taking the long way home…

Happy Miataversary

Twenty-eight years ago today on a cool November evening Donna & I drove over to Augusta after work in our 1981 Honda Prelude (which looked remarkably like this.) Donna drove the Prelude home alone. I drove home in our brand spanking new 1990 Mazda Miata (which looked remarkably like this.)

Ever since that day we have always had a Miata in the garage.

Tonight as we traditionally do every year on this holiday, we’ll gather the family and our pets around a crackling fire in living room and read aloud the story of how Brian Buys A Miata.

Wash Day

We have a friend who can make vinyl stickers, so I had her work up a small angry ladybug for the back of the big Angry Ladybug.

Yesterday both cars got bathes. The Miata needed one to wash off the mud and grass from parking along the side of South Carolina roads on a rainy day and the rest of the weekend’s road grime. The Mini was not nearly as filthy as the Miata, but a recent rain had left easly noticable spots all over the gloss black flat roof.

The Miatas have never gone through an automatic car wash because, not only the convertible thing, but it is small enough that by the time I realize this is a chore it is over. The Sonata on the other hand was just big enough to be annoying, so more often than not we spent the $10 to take it to Lulu’s. The good thing about downsizing from the Sonata to the Mini is now I wash both cars in the driveway in about the same amount of time it took to hand wash the Purple Whale.

Chasing Rainbows

On Saturday Donna and I led the Masters Miata Club on the drive to the North Carolina mountains to see some fall color and drive on a few windy roads. On the way home at our last pit stop in McCormick, SC we put the top up because it looked like rain ahead. The top was down when we left home 11 hours and 400 miles ago and truth be told, we were glad of the excuse because it was about time to take a break from the sun, the wind and the noise.

About 10 miles south of McCormick, as we passed through Plum Branch, I looked left at the dark clouds, thanking ourselves on our decision to raise the roof, when I noticed a small segment of barely visible rainbow. Oooh, we need a rainbow for the Moss Motoring Challenge. I conferred with my navigator, and Donna said, “Turn around.” So, I did a U-turn across the 5 lanes of US221 and turned right on SC283. After a bit, we came to a side road, turned down it and stopped. The rainbow segment was still there. I hopped out and took a picture. When we reviewed it inside the car it was fairly disappointing looking. It was recognizable as a bit of rainbow and would probably count, but both of us were unsatisfied.

Because the sun was going down in the west and 283 traveled east and the rain was ahead in the east, we agreed to keep going in that direction hoping for a better rainbow. A 1/2 mile further along down the road it was still wet from the rain having just been there and another 1/2 mile further it started to rain lightly. The two-lane road was surrounded by tall pine trees, but after a slight shift in road direction the sun popped out behind us and the rainbow appeared in front of us seemingly starting right in the middle of the road. I slowed down to pull over and had to pick a spot carefully because there was very little shoulder. By the time I got stopped and jumped out of the car into the light rain, the sun mostly disappeared and the rainbow, while still visible, had faded considerably. I took several vertically orientated pictures to capture the car, road, trees and about a third of the rainbow’s arc. The in-car review of my efforts had us agreeing that this was much better than the first attempt, but still left a little to be desired.

In for a penny, in for a pound, so we thought even though it was a bit out of the way, we’d drive the whole 20 miles east to Edgefield before turning south to Aiken to see if another rainbow opportunity showed up. Because of the recent downpour, the grass was very wet and the ground a little soggy, so as I pulled back onto the road, the back tire started to spin. I eased off the gas and returned to the road somewhat gracefully, but vowed that next time we pulled over to take a rainbow.

Well, not 3 miles further down the road, everything came together, the sun came out, the rainbow brightened and an empty Baptist church parking lot appeared on the right.

HDTV not HGTV

About a month ago I wrote about my cable company trying to cheat me out of $2.99 a month for a stupid digital adapter box that I didn’t need. I managed to get them to stop charging me the money because one or two adapters were supposed to be free.

I also hoped that in the end I wouldn’t need it. You know what they say about hope? “Hope in one hand & bleep in the other.” By the end of the month all the HD versions of the regular channels disappeared and if you wanted to watch the lo-def versions you needed the adapter. This is no good. Once your eyes have feasted on tasty 16:9 crystal clear images, you just can’t go back to a 4:3 fuzzy-wuzzy picture.

Not wanting to give AtlanticBB the satisfaction I hoped maybe a newer amplified Mohu Leaf would pull in all the local channels unlike the regular Leaf we tried 5 years ago. This way we would keep the high-speed internet and drop the TV portion of the bill. Well you know what they say about hope? Unlike 5 years ago with the non-amplified Leaf, this time we got the local Fox affiliate great, but NBC was nowhere to be found. To top it off ABC worked well only most of the time.

Giving up, I called Atlantic Broadband and asked what do I have to do to get local channels in high definition. Right now we are paying $132 for the Limited TV package and the 125Mb internet, but if I wanted to drop the internet down to 100Mb we could get the “Essentials Package” which would be the Limited TV in HD and they’ll toss in HBO and EPIX for $95…for the first 2 years, then it goes up $5 bucks a month until it gets back to $130ish…at which time we will no doubt have to call and beg for a lower rate for a different package.

Our appointment was scheduled for 2:30 to 5:30pm yesterday and I certainly hoped whoever showed up to do the work would be better than the last time these chuckle-heads had to come into our house. This time, like a Vegas slot machine paying out a few coins, hope won.

Al was pleasant, competent, and went above and beyond. The only possible bad thing I could say about our hour and forty-five minutes together is he reeked of cigarette smoke when you got near him. Because our signal strength was only marginally acceptable he went outside and climbed the pole across the street. From up there he removed a couple of old filters (that are no longer used anyway.) He also ran a ground wire from the new splitter he put on the house to the ground on the electric meter instead of the ground stake (which is not to code) that Mutt and Jeff didn’t fix 4-1/2 years ago. He then made up a couple of new RG-6 coax lines to replace my interior runs, just because.

We have the same channels as we did before, only now in glorious HD. We now also have 5 channels of HBO and 4 of Epix which we will probably hardly ever watch, but I left them in lineup of channels that we will scan through while surfing using the remote, so who knows.

Somewhere along the line when I was telling Donna what we were getting HDTV, either I mis-spoke or she mis-heard, so she was disappointed when I told her we don’t get HGTV even though everytime we are in a hotel room in which that channel is available, she will invariably remark, “I’ve already seen this one.”