Cars

Zoom Zoom Magazine

Somewhere along the line I left my name and address in the hands of Mazda operatives and as a consequence of that action I now get a glossy magazine (AKA advertisement) three or four times a year. The latest edition of Zoom Zoom magazine arrived in my mailbox the other day.

Included in this issue were stories about the new Mazda2, a history of 90 years of Mazda vehicles (with a nifty poster) and a story about all 3 generations of Miatas in Hawaii. The reason for Hawaii was that is where the press was first introduced to the latest version of the car in 2006. They rounded up 3 local Miata owners and their cars to drive the same route as they did back during the introductory press drive.

When they wrote the blurb on the 1999 2nd generation car, I guess they took the owner’s description as gospel, because they wrote that the color was British Racing Green, but that color was not available in 1999. British Racing Green was only available on the Miata as a special edition in 1991 & 2001. His car was really painted a similar color called Emerald Green Mica. Doesn’t anyone with Mazda fact check this magazine?

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 911

Family Car Stickers

The 2010’s equivalent of the 80’s Baby on Board signs, family car stickers. Google it and you will get hundreds of hits to places you can buy these things. They are infinitely configurable too, one couple at work have a man with a fishing pole, a woman with shopping bags and a small girl. Add your pets too! You can even add names to make it easier for the criminal element to abduct your wife, kids or dog.

The other day as we pushed out grocery cart out to the north forty of the Kroger parking lot to the Emperor we passed a couple of SUVs with these stickers on the windows. The one that caught my eye and stood out from any of these family car stickers I’ve seen so far is below.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 911

Mini Scare

Donna has been having some second thoughts about a Hyundai Sonata recently. It is big! It has 4 doors which means people might ask us for rides.

A fellow at work recently bought a Mini. It is a red Cooper S with a white roof and red bonnet stripes and it has rekindled our mild infatuation with these cars. We test drove one back in 2003 and came away feeling a little like Dudley Moore did after bedding Bo Derek in the movie 10, i.e. disappointed.

Well, just the other day she says to me, “Maybe we should look at a Mini again?” Coincidentally, that night, I happen to see a commercial on TV about leasing a new Mini for $199 a month. Hey, I could do that, what with keeping the Miata, the Mini would be sharing driving duties, so keeping it below 12,000 miles a year would be easy.

The lease deal has a few roadblocks. I’ll list them in order of magnitude: First it must be well equipped and list at above 23,100 smackers, this shouldn’t be a problem. Second it has to be an automatic, that will be a slight issue. I could get used to driving one, but finding one…the Greenville dealer has 12 on the lot and not a single one is a slushbox. Charleston’s dealer has 11 with the same problem. Of course I have no idea if this is accurate because the price of all 23 Minis range from $20,100 to $27,100 and each and everyone’s description is identical as far as standard equipment and installed options. The third is the final nail in the coffin though, the deal ends on November 30, 2010. Today!

Started up, went down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 909

I Bet They Were Beautiful Last Week


Hey! Weren’t You Just Here Two Weeks Ago?

Why yes, we were.

Today was our annual trip to the mountains with the MMC to view the fall colors. When I emailed a reminder to the membership, I remarked that Donna and I reserved the right to cancel the event if there weren’t at least two other cars going on the trip. So guess how many showed up? Right, two. Should have picked a larger number. A couple in one of the cars had never been to see the Georgia Guidestones, so we just had to stop.

We had a route planned that went north and west in Georgia ending up in Walhalla, SC for lunch before turning around and returning south and east in South Carolina. Trouble with the plan was that we had too much time built in for rest breaks (it probably would have been just right if we had twice as many cars and the temperatures had been 15° warmer like they were supposed to be), so when we got to I-85 and about 20 minutes from Martha’s Marketplace Cafe, it was only 10:30 AM. An adjustment was made to the route that was to take us on a loop northwest to Franklin, NC before coming back into Walhalla.

We were now in the mountains and the fall colors were nice, but noticeably past peak. At a break in Clayton, GA with traffic on four lane US441 heavy, the clock past noon and the distinct possibility that the scenery would not improve we made another adjustment to the route. Someone pointed at the GA map and said, “What’s that little gray line heading due east towards SC and route 28?” GPS’s and Smarty Pants phones were consulted and it was called Warwoman Rd. I said, “Let’s go. I’ve heard Miata.net chatter about that road. And it was good.” No one complained about the lack of fall color on this stretch of the trip. As one driver put it later, “All I saw was a white line on my right and a double yellow line on my left.” Once we got back in South Carolina on Rte. 28 we hit a sweet spot of altitude and chlorophyll-less-ness making the show out the side windows quite nice for about 15 miles or so.

Lunch in Walhalla at the Brian & Donna Pre-Approved Dining Spot was very good. The only negative was the service was slow, but I got the feeling that everything that happens in Walhalla happens slow. The trip home was uneventful and because we traveled about 50 miles less than we normally do on one of these excursions we got home in daylight and at a decent time for dinner at home.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 881

You Never Forget Your First Subaru

There is a Forrester commercial out entitled Reunion and the tag line is so true:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5UwvFbi5PE

My mother-in-law bought a Subaru back in the early 80’s and that thing was a piece of crap with many issues that repeated trips to the dealer never really ever permanently fixed. To top things off it started to rust around doors and both front and rear quarter panels after 5 years, in New Orleans! I’m sure the cars are much better 20 years hence, but because of that one car I would never own a Subaru…

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 876

Georgia State Parks Geo-Challenge


Georgia’s Stonehenge, just outside of Elberton.

Seeing as we have completed the South Carolina DeLorme Challenge and have in our hot little hands the coordinates for the final cache in the South Carolina County Challenge we were looking for a new adventure. The Georgia State Parks Geo-Challenge looks like a winner. There is a geocache in 42 of Georgia’s 48 State Parks and we are setting off to find them all. Today we bought a yearly pass to Georgia State Parks creating an October 31, 2011 deadline for us to finish this challenge.

Seeing as we were also scouting routes for the MMC’s Leaf Peeping run in two weeks we headed up to the northeast Georgia mountains to start the Challenge. Here is the log I wrote for our first successful find in the series:

We arrived at the park office to get a trail map and stumbled on a small group of Augusta area geocachers. We chatted for a bit then hopped in our respective cars for the drive to the cache. I headed out first with them in hot pursuit. At a fork in the road, I went right, while they, after hesitating went left. Donna and I had plugged in the trailhead parking coords and attacked it from that way. The other 4 used the “drive on the road that will take you nearest the cache” approach. Amazingly enough both teams converged on ground zero at the same time.

Using the hint, I walked right to where I suspected the ammo can would be. It wasn’t. I then did a quick 360 scan and spotted a UPS. Headed over to where I was sure the cache would be, only to be foiled again. Another horizon scan and another UPS, this better be it. On our way over there my wife tripped on a branch, falling down as a distraction, so I could make the find before the Augusta group. Way to go girl! (OK, I’m kidding about the distraction thing. But she really did take an accidental fall as we approached the cache. Total damages, a bit of wounded pride, one scraped knee and probably have a black and blue patella tomorrow.)

We all signed the log, rifled through the schwag, trading nothing, and each group dropped in a Travel Bug. The Augusta folks that needed to stamp their GA Park Geo-Challenge passport thingie did and then each group headed off in opposite directions, back off to their cars. We had left our passport back in the car, which was par for pretty much the way our day was going, so when we got back to the car, we grabbed the paper and walked back to the cache again to stamp it.

After stamping the page, yippee, one down forty-one to go, we grabbed up the TB that one of the Augusta cachers had just dropped off, to make the trip back doubly worth it. I hope the rest of the State Park finds are this interesting?

It wasn’t the first one we tried though, we missed out on the cache in Tallulah Gorge State Park, but that is a story for another day, and do I mean story.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 868

I Can’t Believe I’m Still Listening

I must be a real fan. As of this morning, depending on which version you believe, the FRS playoff chances stood at 3, 4 or 5%. That was before the Yankees won their game today and the Sox lost the first game, postponed by Earl from last night and will likely lost tonight’s regularly scheduled game (they are losing 3-1 in the 7th.)

As much as I enjoy the coffee (and the coffee cake muffin) from Dunkin’ Donuts I fear they may have lost our business forever this morning. We should have taken the hint. On our way into the place this morning we passed a car with a fellow in the drivers seat talking very loudly to himself, or rhetorically to his passenger inside the store, saying, “How long does it take to get a double coffee?!?” There were three employees with only three customers, so it shouldn’t have taken too long, but somehow it did.

One associate, because of the headset, must have been the drive-up person, who’s job description read, “Do not leave the window for any reason, even if there are no cars in line. And when you are not busy please feel free to carry on a personal conversation with your fellow employees to aid in the disruption their productivity.” Employee number 2 was the main counter person and was either very new at the job or only used to dealing with humans via texting or stoned and having a hard time completing a complex order that consisted of three coffees. To be fair, this person was dealing with someone who had either never been in a Dunkin’ Donuts before or never ordered coffee or was hungover. The third person dressed in a pink polo shirt with DD embroidered in brown on their right breast was probably the “cook” and tried to help out the second person in line (whose partner was outside with steam escaping his ears and possible thinking of driving his 15 year old purple Dodge Neon through the front window), but was stymied by the request for iced coffee and the unexpected return of customer number 1 to ask where they kept the “to go” sugar. We took this opportunity to leave the store.

We headed back across town at a small family restaurant called Autens that we had been meaning to try for some time. We ended up spending a bit more money there and the coffee was nothing special, there were three really nice surprises. First was they offered a salmon cake as a meat side, which Donna ordered, and I sampled, which was very good. The second was instead of having “home fries” as the alternative to grits they offered something called potato scramble, which turns out to be, I’m guessing, last nights mashed potatoes with some butter mixed in and fried on the grill into a sort of pancake. Thirdly, our waitress was Evangeline Lilly who was possibly doing research for her next movie. She is a little younger looking than she seemed on TDTVS and her freckles were covered by makeup, but it was her alright.

Started up, went down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 817