Cars

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

Bug Splat

The MMC held its 11th Annual Bug Splat Rally tonight. Can we call it that even if we skipped the year? The first one was in 1999 and for some reason there wasn’t one in 2002.

We only had six cars show for the event, maybe the rains in the area scared a few people off. Last year the event ran through a couple of light showers and most if any caught bugs were washed off by the finish. This year we dodged the rain, but we also dodged almost all of the bugs too.

The Biggest Bug Trophy ended up in the hands a new member couple with their 3″ long streak of moth wing dust. The Closest to the Target was awarded to a small speck about a half inch away from Avery Green Dot. Once again Most Bugs and Cleanest Car Awards were given to the cars that showed up for the run in that condition. The only thing that turned out better than last year was our new route that traveled on a couple of twisty road through rural Aiken County.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 806

Something Different

After about 3 years of boring, no new business, no old business, this is what we did, this is what we are going to do meetings, last night’s was a breath of fresh air. It was so exciting that Robert’s Rules of Order and the Club’s Bylaws were quoted.

We have a new president who ran with the platform of doubling the club’s membership and if any Club could use a membership doubling, it is ours. We started his term with 15 cars (AKA memberships) and before he held his first meeting we lost one. A couple sold their Miata, saying they wanted a sports car?!? I think what he wanted is something with more horsepower or maybe more perceived prestige…

The first thing the new president wanted to do was change our monthly meeting setup. He picked a big issue to push through in his first hundred days. It was his phrase that I turned into the Club web site’s tag line, “We’re like the French Underground. We rotated meeting locations every month and members arrived willy-nilly and sometimes not even in their Miatas. His idea was to meet at same spot every month, someplace visible on a busy street, have the business meeting and then drive as a group to a local restaurant.

This is a great idea, but it really doesn’t fit into Donna and my time schedule. By the time we go through all those steps dinner will not be until 8:00 PM and we always eat some where between 5:30 and 6:30. We have a work around in place for this, seeing as the original meet up spot is at a Mexican restaurant we will eat there, stay for the meeting and then drive with the group to the second restaurant, but just not go inside and eat.

After a close vote, 4 yeahs, 2 nays & 1 abstention, on adopting this format, last night was the first go round and it went pretty well from our point of view, I don’t know what everyone else thought of it though.

Started up, went down, went up, back down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 771

Ten Thousand Years

If you have been following the countdowns on the right-hand sidebar here LOB you will have noticed two changes in the last week. The first was last Sunday when Season 4 of Mad Men premiered and its counter dropped off the page. The second just happened tonight when the counter for the New Miata jumped from 123 to 484.

Miata #1, the 1990 Mariner Blue A Package, lasted 6 years before being traded in. Number two, a 1995 Laguna Blue B Package, stuck around for 8 years before being traded in. Miata #3, our current 2003 Garnet Red LS, was assumed to stay with us the average of the lengths of service of the first 2 cars, seven years, and be traded in on a 2010 model this November. That is now not going to happen, The Emperor will be with us for at least another year.

The main reason for this, we like to say publicly, is the car is not available in a suitable shade of blue. The first two Miatas were blue, and while we have grown to like the current red/maroon shade, we have our hearts set on blue car this time. The current Miatas do come in blue, something called Stormy Blue, but it is too dark, almost Navy Blue and not to our liking.

But the main reason is neither one of us like the new and “improved” third generation of the car. It is only a couple inches longer or wider, but appears relatively huge in comparison. I heard the style of the car in the first couple of years of the 3rd generation compared to an angry bar of soap and I had to agree. They tweaked the looks of front end last year and now it reminds me of a bar of soap with a Mr Potato Head mouth stuck on it. And it is not just the exterior, we both don’t care for the inside either. The doors are taller, so that leaning your arm on the window sill leaves your elbow pointing up. That, along with the taller seats placed lower in the car gives you the feeling of riding in a bathtub. As a “bonus” the new engine routed the exhaust header in such a manner that it intrudes on the passenger foot well and steals precious space for the navigator’s usual complement of tools.

The current rumors on the Miata.net forums call for the forth generation of the car, which is supposed to be smaller and lighter, to appear as 2012 model which means it might come to market in late 2011, so we wait. If worse comes to worse and a new model doesn’t appear next fall, maybe they will add a nice bright blue to the Miata’s paint palette on the last of the 3rd gen cars. Or maybe by then the oft rumored Volkswagen BlueSport will actually exist and it will be a worthy competitor to the Miata.

The post title alludes to an oriental saying that is a loosely translated English phrase used in several oriental countries as an expression used to wish long life to the Emperor.

Started down, went up, back down, back up, down still again, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 760