Too Much Red

If you tuned in last night or today you would have noticed that I changed the style of the blog. The style itself wasn’t bad, but it came out more redder than I liked.

So tonight I changed the color scheme to something lighter. My wife viewed the page on the desktop and proclaimed it looked like Easter. I didn’t see it on the laptop, where I picked the background, here the blue and greens are a touch darker and what she saw as yellow on the desktop, looks khaki here.

Come back tomorrow, probably be some more different colors. And if you are lucky, maybe a story.

Wish Upon A Car

There was a car show this morning in Aiken to benefit the Make A Wish Foundation, so we thought we’d go to it score a Motoring Challenge point and see some cool cars.

Mission accomplished, although neither were as good as we hoped. The turn out for the show wasn’t that great. The largest class of vehicle seemed to be the 10-20 year old slammed pickup trucks finished in a 50-50 mix of Custom & Rat Rod. Instead of just photo bombing the car show as we have done in the past, drove up to the registration tent and donated $5 (about a 1/4 of the entry fee) just to take a photo actually in the show.

The first photo looked weak with the limited turnout. Turning around to get a photo of the Registration Tent and you couldn’t I was in a car show. To get a picture of the banner for the show, we ended up back where we belong, on the outside looking in on the action on the inside.

You can tell we are in South Carolina by the USC Gamecock tent and the propensity of the people to buy maroon cars.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1490

Motoring Challenge Points 1, Approx Miles Driven 10
Totals So Far: 40 points & 940 miles

Dead Mans Pants

In a Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee Jerry Seinfeld tells Seth Meyers of his 1972 Porsche 911 Carrera RS that, “Well it’s a Dead Man Car. I bought it from a dead guy, and it’s not getting sold again until I’m dead.”

This last weekend before we made it to the Cub In, we took a trip to Lexington to get some bagels at a chain called Brueggers that purports to New York Style bagels. Because, try as we might, we just can’t get a decent bagel in Aiken.

Every time we get to Lexington we have to stop at their Goodwill store because they have this awesome Dollar Rack where Donna can get tons of stuff for the nephew and nieces in Washington. While she shops for them, I shop for myself and if you search long enough, you can get lucky. Over the years I’ve found a couple of polo shirts in my size that still had the store tags and stickers on them.

This time I scored a couple pair of pristine Wrangler jeans in my size. They didn’t have the tags still on them but the material had that new denim stiffness to them that they couldn’t have been through the wash more than twice. The shirts I can explain, somebody must not have liked the colors, but these jeans, they’re perfect, somebody must have died. Because barring mishap, I can keep a pair of jeans at least ten years…

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1489

Cub In

Cub In

The last post’s photo came as we were leaving the Aiken Radio Control Society‘s 3rd Annual Cub-In on Saturday. It’s called a Cub-In because if you are flying a Piper Cub replica you get extra point credits, but you can fly anything you want. There were Piper Cubs there with wing spans ranging from 2′ to 6’ and there were also a lot of other types of aircraft on the “tarmac.” It seems like most of the folks in attendance had one Cub and then some other flying thing.

The wind did seem to die down a bit as the morning progressed, but it would still gust at times causing some of the planes to end up in the weeds or upside down even while doing the Ground Pylon Event. It may have not been the fun event the participants had hoped for, but Donna and I did enjoy watching the planes fly when they could. By lunchtime though, we had had enough sunshine, and headed back home.

Raggedy Andy

After 7-1/2 years the Emperor’s top is looking a little worse for the wear. When it is down and you look at the window, it appears that the cloth that holds it in place is starting to separate. From the outside it looks just fine though and it is not loose when pressed on. There are several dark stain spots at points where the canvas is stretched tight over the frame. Inside a couple of the stains there are tiny little holes that look like they go all the way through. Even if they do go through, they are so small that they probably wouldn’t leak unless we get caught in a frog strangler. But because we have taken to only driving the Miata on nice days, the likelihood of that happening is slim.

A new top is on the horizon, but I’m waiting until we get the new shocks and springs installed. For that we are just waiting on our turn in the queue at Panic Motorsports. We are near the top, so hopefully it will be next week.

Then will come the top decision; what color and what material? The Emperor came with a tan cloth top from the factory. When that one was replaced in 2008 I went back with a tan cloth top. Because the Miata has become a fair weather ride nowadays I’m thinking that I could save about $125 dollars by going with a vinyl top this time. Trouble with that plan is I’ve seen some older tan vinyl tops and they get dirtier looking easier than the cloth ones (although this might not be a problem for the Emperor because he lives indoors.)

Then there is the black vinyl roof option. Black would not look bad on the car because it was standard on the lower trim levels of the car and I remember seeing a couple back in 2003. And it would give the car a whole new look on the few times the roof is up. Maybe even get some black stripe vinyl and black out the windshield header like Mazda is doing with the 4th generation of the car, that way stifling my desire to but a brand new Miata. 🙂

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1487

Danger Will Robinson

After a crappy start to the year on riding our bike to work, today marked the 4th Friday in a row we have accomplished it. Because of our timing and the route we take it is normally a placid and enjoyable trip, but today we encountered not one, not two, but three inconsiderate or inattentive drivers that had our hearts racing a bit.

1) Less than 10 minutes into the ride to work some guy in a Suburban was in such a hurry that he couldn’t wait behind us for the last 50 yards to a stop sign that he passed us, taking up the entire left lane on a slightly curvy section to beat us to said sign. Of course we arrived at the sign at the same time with us in the right and correct lane and him taking up three quarters of the left and wrong lane. As we paused together, I looked over to my left, with my helmet mounted headlight and illuminated the bozo as he was looking back at me. We both had frowny faces on, I could see his, but mine was probably masked by the high powered LED light shining in his eyes. This can be a tricky and semi-busy intersection, but fortunately it was not at 5:40 AM or who knows what would have happened.

The second two occurred on the way home and within an 1/8 of mile of each other:

2) Passing through one of the neighborhoods some guy in a pickup truck made sure it was clear to one side of him and started backing out of his driveway very briskly without looking our way. I reached for the brakes about the time Donna shouted very loudly, “HEY!” He hit the brakes, stopped and said loudly, “What did you say?” I let off the brakes and Donna repeated, “Hey,” as we cruised on by. I don’t know if he ever looked in our direction or he did and didn’t see us, but before the loud shout he looked very much like he would back right into our path.

3) About the time we calmed back down from the pickup incident and were motoring along down a slight hill when an aging, paint peeling Toyota Camry misjudged our closing rate or didn’t see us at all and decided to make the left turn in front of us. Because I could see that they were angling to cut across the intersection and we were already a couple feet into our lane avoiding the rough patches along the right edge, to avoid smacking into the right front quarter panel at 15 MPH, I steered almost into the other lane so it wasn’t as close as it could have been.

Considering how uneventful our commute to work usually is and has been, I guess the law of averages caught up with us today. Thing of it was we thought for sure that we would even see less than the typical dozen or so cars today because we figured everyone would have already left town to get an early start on the Memorial Day weekend.