Blipshift

828 Days In The Making

The Blipshift T-Shirt of April 29, 2020 was called AsteRISK and I thought that maybe I’d buy one. But, I hesitated, so I missed out on it and it came to be called my biggest regret of the year.

Sometime early this year Blipshift started selling a bumper sticker with that statement on it and I thought maybe I should buy that. But, on second thought, the black bumper sticker just wouldn’t look good on the CTBNL’s silver bumper, so I didn’t.

Then in February I did buy one, just to have it before they stopped selling them. And you never know, our next car could be black. Which is exactly what happened. Not one we bought, but When we took our trip to Santa Fe we rented a Mazda CX-5 and it was black. I put the sticker on its back bumper and left it there for the 2 weeks we had the vehicle. Since then it has been stuck to the top of my tool box.

Occasionally Blipshift does reprint a particular design, usually in a different color, but they never did. This past Thursday and Friday, plus all next week, they ae celebrating their 10 year anniversary by reprinting the best designs from the past decade. Guess which one made the cut? AsteRISK did!

This time, 828 days later, I didn’t hesitate, I ordered one.

Take the Long Way Home

A couple weeks ago I ordered yet another T-shirt from Blipshift and for the first time in a long time it is Miata related. I really wanted the Action Hero II shirt that was part of the Carch Madness T-shirt bracket on the site, and in spite of me voting for it a dozen times at least, it finished as a runner up to the four shirts that did get printed. So when the runner-up shirts were offered for sale over the Memorial Day weekend I jumped at the chance to own my favorite.

On Tuesday I received an email telling me that Action Hero II had shipped. When I looked up the tracking number it said it was coming from Columbia, SC. Oooh, cool, I might have it in time to wear to the Thursday’s Monthly Miata Club Meeting. When I checked the tracking on Thursday morning the shirt was in Raleigh, NC. WTF? Today it arrived in Forest Park, GA with a possible delivery tomorrow. I’m sure they have a good deal worked out with their shipping partners, but I can’t see how it is cheaper to send my T-shirt on an 810 mile loop instead of a 56 mile hop.

Note: shirt arrived in Saturday the 8th’s mail.

I Just Can’t Help Myself

Bought another Blipshift T-shirt. Lucky Number 13 and only the 4th non-Miata T. When I showed it to my wife to make sure I had approval to purchase, she said, “Order me one too.”

We are both early VW lovers. Before we bought our first Miata in 1989 we test drove a last year (1979) Convertible Beetle. Not real sorry we didn’t buy that VW, because how long I might have missed out on the Miata fun, but kind of sorry because it would be neat to have an old Beetle again. Don’t know where we’d put it or even drive it, but those cars have so much character.

Donna’s first car was a 1971 Super Beetle. She shipped it over to me on Guam because I was there first, and even though we weren’t married yet, she even trusted me drive it around until she got there (I had sold my B210 before going over there.) While we there we fell in with a squadron mate who had the VW “bug” bad, so at one point we owned three, her Type I Beetle, I had a Type III Squareback and together we bought a 15-year old Type II commercial bus.

Her car was a sort-of rare semi-automatic 3-speed that for the heck of it, Keith and I converted to a regular 4-speed standard. When we left the island we sold it to another squadron mate who was going to take it back to California when he left Guam in about a year. He was from Santa Barbara and I like to think that car is still tooling around out there.

My Squareback was an Automatic too, but the more conventional kind. It had dual carbs with a glass-pack muffler and I’d just roar around island. Sold it for cheap to another sailor when we came back to the states and I bet that thing turned into a Guam Bomb. Probably the only thing left of that car is a slightly higher aluminum content in a of patch soil a few yards off a weed chocked back road on the south of the island.

The bus is a whole ‘nother post by itself, maybe I’ll save that until tomorrow.

51,000 Miata T-shirts

I’ve got a Blipshift problem. Like a junkie looking for another fix I check their site nearly every morning hoping that I’ll like their design, I need just one more car related T. They’ve done about a dozen Miata related shirts and I have 6 or 7 of them. I’ve also got at least 3 other random design shirts too. I’ve submitted a Miata design idea, which they used. I also submitted a photo using the hashtag #blipshifted that they used on the site.

For the design idea, I got a free copy of that particular shirt & and a big gift certificate of Blip Bucks (or what ever they call ’em.) For submitting the photo of socks-in-a-jar I got an additional smaller gift certificate. So when the design(s) in the thumbnail showed up on Wednesday I knew I had to get one. I still had money left over on the gift certificate from my Pop Up Blocker suggestion and it was burning a hole in my pocket, so I splurged and got a hoodie and a shirt (and a sticker.)

For the hoodie I bought the silver NC because that is what color my current car is. Besides no one but probably a Miata purist will know which generation it is anyway (and even in the MMC there are probably only 3 or 4 who would know.) Then I bought the red ND on the t-shirt. The green NB was too dark on the dark gray shirt, if they ever resto-mod the shirts I’d get the NB version if it was lighter in color or green on a lighter colored shirt.

On the way over to North Augusta for dinner out with friends the CTBNL past through its 51,000th mile.

Jar of Toe Jam

Friday night was the MMC’s annual Christmas Party. I really kind of dislike giving a store bought gift for the gift exchange, so when I can, I like to make something sort of crafty. After last year’s Wrench on the Bench I really felt like there was no way to top that. So this year I dropped back and bought some stuff, admittedly non-standard stuff, and added a little crafty delivery system.

I didn’t get a cut of sales of the Blipshift shirt I inspired, but I did in fact get a $100 credit at the company store to use as I see fit. So on Cyber Monday when they offered these cool Cargyle Socks, I decided to spend some of that money. Because it was two pair I figured the second one would be my gift to give away. I also bought a set of the laser-cut ornaments and then I could use one of the four as decoration on the sock delivery package.

Initially Donna was going to bring a bottle of Blackberry Gold that we bought in Hendersonville over Thanksgiving from the Flat Rock Ciderworks. I was going to some how stuff the socks into a wine bottle so that we would both show up with identical shaped gift bags. This planned crashed for two reasons, first Donna opted to take the hard cider as her gift to the Valve Store’s Lady’s Christmas party the night before and second it turns out wine bottlenecks are too small to stuff a grown man’s sock through.

What you see above is Plan B. I was impressed with my effort, the person who ended up with it on Friday night was not. I was not too surprised by that though as the car club is stuffed full of non-car guys. Even if every person in the Club was there, I bet it would take less than one hand to count the number of folks out of the nearly fifty member/member families who would know the significance of the color pattern of the socks.

Pop-Up Blocker

Last November Blipshift released yet another Miata related T-shirt and again it was of a first generation car. They had never had a shirt featuring the second generation car, the one that I owned, so I let them know of my displeasure and submitted a design. They responded with, “Thanks, we’ll let you know.” I had totally forgot about it, until two days ago, when they did in fact let me know.

Not sure if the shirt’s wording makes any sense, except in context with the November 2015 shirt, but what the heck, because it was my idea I get one for free. Trouble is, back then I owned a maroon car so that is what they made the shirt color, now I have a silver car. Maybe when they do a resto-mod version it will be on a gray shirt…

Go buy one (even though I don’t get a cut.)

Long Journey Home

On July 29th I ordered another Blipshift T-shirt, yet another Miata design, another reprint of a shirt I already have, but with a difference. This shirt besides being long sleeve it has an NB image, AKA my kind o’ car on it. This.

Orders were stopped being taken on August 1st and a week later the shirt was on its way. Everything was going along smoothly until the USPS got a hold of in outside of Atlanta. They sent it southeast instead of due east. When it arrived in Valdosta they realized quickly it was in the wrong spot. Here is where it got weird, according their tracking it went to Augusta, then Tallahassee, then back to Augusta in 16 hours. It was in our Aiken mailbox today, so maybe one day late.

Aug 8, 2016
7:40 PM EDT UNITED STATES Electronic Notification Received
7:57 PM EDT UNITED STATES En route to DHL eCommerce Distribution Center
9:26 PM ET Secaucus, NJ, US Arrival DHL eCommerce Facility
 
Aug 9, 2016
12:06 AM ET Secaucus, NJ, US Processed
8:17 AM ET Secaucus, NJ, US Departure Origin DHL eCommerce Facility
 
Aug 11, 2016
9:15 PM ET Forest Park, GA, US Arrival Destination DHL eCommerce Facility
 
Aug 12, 2016
5:46 AM ET Forest Park, GA, US Tendered to USPS
 
Aug 13, 2016
7:13 AM ET Valdosta, GA, US< Arrival at Post Office<
8:04 AM ET Valdosta, GA, US Missent
7:49 PM ET Augusta, GA, US Arrived USPS Sort Facility
9:04 PM ET Tallahassee, FL, US Processed Through Sort Facility
 
Aug 14, 2016
11:15 PM ET Augusta, GA, US Processed Through Sort Facility
 
Aug 15, 2016
4:26 AM ET Aiken, SC, US Arrival at Post Office
9:24 AM ET Aiken, SC, US Sorting Complete
9:34 AM ET Aiken, SC, US Out for Delivery
2:14 PM ET Aiken, SC, US Delivered