Peach Parade Pre-Breakfast & One Last Garage Floor Mockup


Today was the MMC’s annual trip to the Twin Lakes airport for breakfast before heading over to Trenton, SC to drive in the Peach Festival Parade. There were 8 Miata lined up in front of the Restaurant but only 6 drove the parade. There was one Club couple along for the drive, but had other obligations so the couldn’t stay. And one random Miata who is a local, and eats that the Airport Grill every Saturday, and we see him there every year. The parade participation seemed kind of light, but mostly is because they were calling for rain all week and it scared away a few groups, but we had a beautiful and a slightly quick parade drive. The crowds along the route seemed diminished too, but we still ran out of candy to toss for the last 50 yards…

I took a couple photos of the garage floor this morning so I could do a quick mock up of the proposed floor in the garage this morning. Not bad. We have some old light blue paint left over from a bathroom, so I may see about laying it over the crappy darker wood paneling on the wall with windows to spruce the place up more.


54,000 Garage Floor Ideas

Sixty-six Black Vented Ultra-Loc Tiles for the center where the CTBNL will sit, surrounded with a checkerboard border of a combination of Graphite & Gunmetal Diamond Grid-Loc Tiles, two tiles wide except three at the back that will be about where the car sits, 94 total. Finishing off the end near the laundry room with the ten of the 3″ edge pieces in red. Total, a little over $450. The only other expense will be about $20 of landscape fabric to quiet the plastic tiles on the concrete floor.

On the way to work this morning the Miata moved past 54,000 miles.

Halfway Home


I vowed to write one post a night for the entire month of June, well today is the 15th, so with this post I am halfway to my goal. On the way to Olar to get a 1927 car for that challenge we passed right through the Town of Denmark. We used a Denmark picture before in the challenge, the first time is was for the “Letter D” in our first Challenge in 2014. This time it was for the “Around the Wold” category (Signs with the names of locations outside of North America.)

I don’t think we’ll use Denmark’s sister Scandinavian country city names (Norway & Sweden) for this year’s Challenge this year though, we have plenty to finish the category just using city streets in Aiken.

Jedi Mind Trick

This morning Donna went along for a ride in the Miata, which she misses, to the local Dunkin Donuts for a quick breakfast. She wanted to go this particular morning for two reasons, 1) the a fore mentioned Miata ride and 2) because the local DD has free copies of the Aiken Standard for customers and Wednesday is the day there are grocery coupons in the paper.

We are getting away cheap because we bring our own drinks and all we buy are a muffin for me and some doughnut holes for her. When the girl waiting on us asked what we wanted I said, “I’ll have a Coffee Cake Muffin and my wife will get 4 Munchkins.” As I was about to say, ‘Two glazed and 2 chocolate glazed’, as that is her go to order for the doughnut hole variety when Donna said, “I want 4 chocolate glazed.” I repeated to the server, “Four chocolate glazed Munchkins”, all the while thinking, ‘She usually gets 2 glazed and 2 chocolate glazed.’

We sat down and when Donna opened her little bag and showed me – 2 glazed and 2 chocolate glazed.

*The force is strong with this one.*

Roaring Twenties

This 1927 Ford Model T Police car marks the halfway point in our Moss Motoring Challenge quest of getting a picture of a vehicle from each one of the 12 decades since the turn of the 20th century. And it is worth 6 points. Something from 1910 to 1919 is worth seven points and anything from the nineteen aughts is worth 10.

Every year in October the small town of Olar in South Carolina hosts a Model T’s festival. Olar has a special connection with Ford Motor Co. because of Henry Ford’s relationship with C.F. Rizer, an Olar native, in the early 1900s. You can read about it in this Charleston newspaper article from 2011.

Personal Speed Bump

The driveway slopes down as it nears the end towards the door, rises up to the door and then drops again into the garage, forming a low wide pyramid. When we brought home the first stock Miata back in 1989, the car bottomed out with a quick thunk on the frame rail with both of us in the car. A coworker at the time helped me solve the issue by filling in most of the area in between the external down then up portion.

The Emperor was lowered slightly and with this fix in place it would only bump if I didn’t slow down a notch before entering. The CTBNL is just slightly lower than the Emperor and as a consequence of that I need to take more care entering the garage at all times. With just the driver it is not too bad. Add a trunk full of groceries and you really have to creep in slowly. Add a passenger and the car hits bottom every time on the high point where the garage door closes on right under my butt.

Donna has taken to not getting into the Miata before we leave and getting out before I drive in. This is fine in a way though, as long as it is not raining, because it makes it easier to get in or out. When I park the Miata in the garage I have to pull to left and just clear the tandem up against the wall on my side and there are cabinets on her side that leave barely 18 inches to open the door and then squeeze in (with the top up and holding a purse and travel mug this is a giant feat of gymnastics.)

At first I though my easy solution would be to extend the interior slope of my wide pyramid about a foot or maybe two with a few bags of Quikrete like we did in 1989. But the other day I had both of us ride into the garage just until we hit bottom. We squeezed out of the car because the doors lined up with the garage door. I then measured the length from the bottom of the pyramid to to the front tire and it came to about 5-1/2 feet. Wow. I’d have to raise the floor up, for at least a half inch about 6 feet into the garage. So much for a couple bags of Quikrete.

My next though was to get some of those 12″ x 12″ plastic tiles and lay them down. Because of the cabinets on one side and the inside of my personal speed bump 10′ x 16′ would cover the floor nicely. I think because the car is not hitting very hard the half inch thick tiles might just do the trick, I’d still have to slow down some, but both of us could ride inside. Total cost would be $420 to 430 depending on tile color selection. The black ones are cheaper. The new garage door has no windows so it is dark enough in there already color in the floor would be almost necessary. For grins I went to one of the sites design tools to see what it might look like. What do you think? Classic Checkerboard or Stripes?

Hot Meat

Regular readers know that our go to Sunday morning breakfast is about a 10 mile bike ride to Ridgecrest Coffee Bar in east Aiken with a 3-5 mile ride home. Well, our go to meal is to split one of their signature Breakfast Paninis: large pieces of thick crusty sourdough bread surrounding a layer of white American cheese, a 1/4″ thick layer of baked scrambled egg patty and 3 or 4 slices of deli ham and toasted/melted in a industrial panini press.

The pressing does a great job of toasting the bread in a perfect “ruffles have ridges” way and melts the cheese, but the ham can be an issue. Depending on who was cooking on Sunday mornings the meat, which comes out of the fridge, was anywhere from lukewarm to actually cold, which totally ruins the combination. In the beginning we made a “suggestion” to the owner one morning when she was there that they should heat up the ham first. She said, “They are supposed to, but I’ll reiterate that to them.” Since then we have had slightly better luck with the results. So recently Donna has specifically reminded me, because I’m the one who traditionally does the ordering, to remind them to really make sure the meat is hot before making our sandwich. And most of the time I actually do tell them to, “Make sure the ham is hot.”

Today when I ordered from the young girl at the register I started with, “Please make sure the ham gets heated up real well because my wife likes her…errr-likes it that way.” I almost said, “…my wife likes her meat hot.” I self corrected mid-sentance because I just wasn’t sure if she would have understood that I wanted to make sure the ham was hot in the sandwich for my wife, groaned at my double entendre, thought I was flirting with her or maybe even bragging about my imagined sexual prowess.