Trip Up

No one met us the GA Welcome Center, but that was expected. We met the Haffs at the Publix Shopping Center on Fury’s Ferry Road as expected. The Breitingers weren’t there, but we pressed on without them.

First stop was in McCormick about 30 miles up the road. There we made a pit stop and hung around for about 20 minutes until the Kurt and Karen arrived. Next stop was Walhalla were John requested a gas stop to top off as it is a bit cheaper here then in the mountains proper.

After lunch in our usual haunt in Highlands we pressed on. Outside of Cashiers, John took us on a nice little back road called Wayah Bald Road up to US74/19 instead of the normal SC28. Cool road with a lot of twisty bits, tree lined stretches and almost no traffic.

That evening, the final couple arrived in car # 4, John & Barbara Battles. The 8 of us dined in the new Mexican place in Robbinsville. By the end of the meal it was almost dark and none of wanted to attack the dragon. Not for any fear of the road, but for fear of the deer that might leap in our path. We retired early.

Purchased Today: $7.25 in gas
Money spent since 03/03/03: $1136.59
Started down, went up, still up.
Top Transitions since 02/02/03: 220

Oreo Quality Control

My snack for the week was Oreo cookies, Double Delight OREO Coffee and Cream to be exact. My wife packs 5 in a plastic sandwich bag for me to enjoy at my morning break. In each of the last 4 days there has been one cookie in my bag that has had one of the chocolate wafers on upside down, that is a smooth side is showing and the imprinted side is towards the filling. For some reason I don’t remember this little non-conformance occurring with such regularity.

I’m sure in the beginning these defective cookies were destroyed. Then, as with the rest of manufacturing America, cost became more important than quality. Slowly things migrated from throwing them away, to giving them to charities to allowing a certain percentage to make into consumer packages. Now with each passing quarter the total of non-conforming cookies allowed has been increased.

Soon somewhere in the corporate halls of Nabisco a decision will be made to eliminate the embossing of the words OREO and the Nabisco logo altogether. It will be cheaper all around and then it won’t matter at all which way the cookies come together. To keep the identity they will have to spray the likeness of these logos on with some food dye or something.

Oh, and they will call it “New and Improved” too.

Gased Up & Ready To Go

The clothes are in the wash, the windshield is clean and the CD with 20 hours of reggae MP3s is loaded. Just have to put the clean clothes in our “suitcase”, toss it in the trunk and set the alarm for 6:00 PM.

‘Twas the night before Gapping, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The gas tanks were filled with high octane with care,
In hopes that their turbos would not ping while there;

The drivers were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of twisty roads danced in their heads;
And mamma in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled down for a long pre-drive nap,

There’s more…

Purchased Today: $8.50 in gas
Money spent since 03/03/03: $1129.34
Started down, still down.
Top Transitions since 02/02/03: 219

Comment Spam

We get annoying phone calls selling us stuff we don’t want. We get regular mail flyers full of stuff we don’t want. We get tons of spam emails for stuff we don’t want.

I got hit with a new one yesterday and until someone comes up with a clever word for this, I’ll call it Comment Spam.

It wasn’t random at all. If you search my rant site for the word cholesterol you get one hit, it’s in the post they left the comment on. Notice that I had accidentally mis-spelled cholesterol. If you search for the correct spelling, there are no hits. in the comment spam they too spell cholesterol wrong, with an “al” on the end. I never get a link or even the name of the supplement, so was this a random act of a random person who stumbled on my site?

Gotta Go Air Up

Short posts tonight and tomorrow as I’ll be getting the car ready for our Club’s Annual Gap trip. That’s right, twisty ass roads of North Carolina with the dragon as the icing on the cake. Plan on a fun run Friday evening after arrival and then a early morning more spirited assault. Followed by a day of enjoying what the mountains have to offer.

Gotta go put a little more air in the tires. use 32 psi for normally driving, but I want to add 3or 4 more to stiffen the sidewalls a bit more. Tomorrow I guess I’ll shake out the mats and use the California Duster to get the light coating of road dirt off the car. It is not enough to go fast, but you have to look good doing it. 🙂

Purchased Today: $0
Money spent since 03/03/03: $1120.84
Started down, still down.
Top Transitions since 02/02/03: 219

Holy

Today’s Phototime Tuesday theme was “holey” and didn’t know what I was going to shoot. Inspiration was slow to come. My first thought was, I’m having swiss cheese in my sandwhiches this week, why not grab a slice and click, but then what kind of background would I use. How about a toe poking through a holey sock? I don’t have any socks with holes and I didn’t want to sacrifice a perfectly good one for the sake of art. Then it hit me, the holes in the seats of the Miata for the headrest speakers.

Purchased Today: $0
Money spent since 03/03/03: $1120.84
Started down, still down.
Top Transitions since 02/02/03: 219

I’m Not A Gearhead

But I would like to be able to do the “easy” stuff on my car. Changing the oil and rotating tires has become second nature. I’ve done the brakes, i.e., change pads, bleed them, etc twice now. I would like to change out the transmission fluid and the differential oil, but to do these you need both a 23mm and a 24 mm socket. From a quick search on the web these will run me $15 a piece, plus $10-15 for the 1/2″ ratchet. Then a oil pump would make this easier to get the oils back in these hard to reach places, another $5-10. Not to mention the cost of the fluids. Probably be cheaper to get the Mazda place to do it when they change my timing belt in a couple weeks.