The KIA Soul is one of those “cute” little cars targeted towards the younger set and their ads for have it have been interesting. I personally think the car is ugly and I’m not a big fan of Hip-Hop music, but I’m smiling now having just watched this latest one.
It hits the all the right notes (pun sort of intended.)
Donna and I went back over to the bike/hike trail next to I-520 this morning. We had two more caches to hide, one was one that used to be in Hitchcock Woods before the Great Cache Purge of 2009 and the other probably would have found its way into the woods eventually (if it had remained a possibility.) We also had a Travel Bug we were going to drop into the cache we had placed yesterday.
We hid the first and then on our way to hide the second cache we walked by yesterday’s site and we could see 3 cars parked in the cul-de-sac near the cache. Our hide wasn’t yet published when we left the house this morning, but it must have been since because sure enough cachers were there. One couple had already found it and another was in the woods looking. We chatted a bit and even got nudge for the Gargoyle’s Crypt we missed yesterday. We hid cache#2 and went down and wasted 15 minutes looking and even with the hints couldn’t find it.
Remember yesterday I bent my glasses doing a small tumble when researching today’s possibly cache locations? No I didn’t fall again today, but I did break my temporary crown while eating lunch today. I have been chewing on the good side mostly, but sometimes I slip and chew over there. I didn’t just pull it off the post, but managed to bite down on it and break it into three pieces with the smallest one of never recovered…
We have been virtual wishful car shopping recently, maybe it is because we are under a year in the countdown to a New Miata or maybe it is talk of taking this year’s trip out west in a car instead of a plane or maybe it is because automakers are offering great deals at this time of year (Mazda is offering $4500 off left over 2009 Miatas), but I have been hitting the web and having fun.
If you had told me 4-1/2 years ago that I might be driving anything other than a Miata I would have told you you were crazy. But now I’m not so sure. It all harkens back to our first ride in the current generation Miata back in October of 2005, we were underwhelmed, so the seed of doubt has been planted. The Miata is still at the head of the list, but there are a couple of other contenders on our radar, cars that are in our cost comfort level, around $25k and are convertibles and are available in blue. From worst to first they are:
Now let’s go a little further out there, what if we don’t get a convertible at all. Wild huh? Suppose we consider a little larger “sporty” car instead of a convertible. The car would have to be in the same price range and it would have be a coupe (I may be getting older, but I’m not ready for a 4-door Buick just yet.) From worst to first they are:
A wild card in the coupe class would be a Miata with the detachable hardtop, leave it on nearly all the time and just pop it off for nice weekends.
I didn’t have a blog back then, so my creative writing outlet was the Aiken Bike Club’s newsletter. I tried to add a little humor to the meeting minutes and the ride reports, but the most fun came from making up the Ride Schedule. Find an obscure event that happened on a particular day and spin a title and text from it. Here is the December 1994 Aiken Bicycle Club Ride Schedule:
Sat Dec 10 – 10:00 AM
SHOOT the ROCK, BAY-BEE! Ride. 98 years ago today in New Haven, CT an event happened ensuring that Dick Vitale wouldn?t have to try to make a living selling cars. Wesleyan University played Yale in the first inter-collegiate basketball game. Yale won 39 to 4. Doug Walker is today?s ride coach/announcer. (40 miles/M)
Sun Dec 11 – 1:45 PM
Christmas Parade Ride. Once again the club will ride in the Aiken Jaycee?s Christmas parade. Deck the bikes with boughs of holly, garland, etc. The tackier the better and meet at Weeks where we will ride to our starting spot, do the parade thing and ride back home. (10 miles/E)
Sat Dec 17 – 9:00 AM
Saturnalia Ride. The masters and the slaves will ride the same trails on the first day of the festival in honor of the Roman god of agriculture, Saturn. Meet Brian Bogardus with your ATB on the car rack for the trip to the trailhead. (8-12 miles/M)
Sun Dec 18 – 1:00 PM
Extol the Ride Leader Ride. Today?s route will will be fairly circuitous as ride leader Donna Bogardus takes the group to every drive-up window on the southside of Aiken to compliment the employee behind the sliding glass window on the first day of ?Tell Someone They Are Doing A Good Job? Week. (10-15 miles/E)
Sat Dec 24 – 1:00 PM
Christmas Eve Ride. If you are not too busy assembling tricycles put some warm spiced, not spiked, cider in your water bottle and go for a ride with Doug Walker in search of roasted chestnuts. (30 miles/M)
Sun Dec 25 – 1:00 PM
I Got Some Really Cool Stuff Ride. Nobody volunteered to lead this ride, but if you want people to see those new bike related presents, show up and show off. Bring a $1 grab bag type gift for swapping. (10-15 miles/E)
Sat Dec 31 – 5:00 PM
First Night Aiken Non Ride. Meet some of your fellow club members at this family oriented New Year?s Eve celebration on Laurens Street. Starts at 5:00 PM and runs ?til the New Year starts. To purchase admission buttons ($5, kids six and under are free) or for more information stop by the Aiken Center for the Arts <641-9094> at 112 Laurens St.
Sun Jan 1 – 10:00 AM
New Year?s Day State Park Ride. Steve Nolan is up as ride leader for this Bike Club tradition. Start out the year the right way! Ride to Aiken State Park, eat some cookies, and ride back. (45 miles/M-D)
Although we swore we were going to be staying home this weekend because we will be on the move the next two, we couldn’t stand it. We had completed the Alphabet Soup – South Carolina Style Challenge a couple months ago by grabbing 26 caches within the state’s border, each one beginning with a different letter of the alphabet, we hadn’t done the final stage in Belton. That was today’s destination.
We started by doing the bread crumb series of caches which start in North Augusta and end in Greenwood (or vice versa.) At each cache you get part of a set of coordinates and after doing all 6 you end up with the whereabouts of 2 different caches, one in each of the end point cities. Seeing as we were heading north, when we got to Greenwood we plugged in our bonus cache coords and headed off for it. When we pulled into the park where it was located the place was jammed with cars and people soccer balls. Turned around and left, to come back another day.
We also had a few others to look for on the way up and way back besides our goal cache in Belton. We finished the day with 10 caches found, 2 counties checked off, one more DeLorme page complete and one DNF.
Unfortunately the DNF was for the one cache we really wanted, Alphabet Soup. I know I really shouldn’t wear shorts when caching, but I’m willing to put up with a few random scratches for comfort, so I risk it. Hunting for this cache I really regretted it. Here is the log I left on the cache page:
It was easier finding the 26 letters of the alphabet caches than it was finding this one.
Walking along next to a stream when the arrow of the GPSr points 40′ into the the brush perpendicular to the trail. After about 5 feet in I knew I was not coming out of this unscathed, there were pointy thorns aplenty tangled everywhere. I got within 25′ of GZ and couldn’t get to it for the brambles. Backed up a few feet and attacked at another angle. Different briars stopped me, still about 25′ away.
Struggled back to the trail looking for another way in. Spotted something promising about 15 feet further along. Only a few steps in and already it was major pokeville. Dodge. Weave. Duck. GZ is 25′ way. Dang it. I’ve already been stuck several times, so I barge along parallel to the trail and get myself locked in real good in a tangle of stickers. Check the GPSr, yep, 25′ away. Losing a little more skin and blood I forge through the stickers in that direction.
I stop when I get to a point where there is an inch of water on the ground. The arrow on the GPSr is pointing back the way I came and you can guess as to how far away it said I was…twenty-five feet.
My wife, who had given up long ago because of the briers, talked me out of the sticker bushes before I passed out from blood loss and we mumbled and grumbled our way back to the car. I am not going to look good in shorts for several weeks…
If we ever come back for this one I’m bringing a DR Brush Mower!
Saturday the MMC took a trip to Winnsboro to visit the South Carolina Railroad Museum. This weekend there was a visiting steam engine to give that old time feel (and smell) to your train ride. We combined the Club’s monthly breakfast with the train event, plus following the hour long train ride we drove to a nearby town for lunch making for almost a full day Miataness.
After lunch Donna and I went our separate ways from the group because we had an alternative agenda, that’s right, geocaching. Before leaving we made tentative dinner plans with another MMC couple to meet in Lexington at the Uno Chicago Grill at 5:30 to complete the Trifecta (all 3 meals out.)
Got all caught up chasing camo’d containers in the north central part of the state and ended up not being able to make it back to Lexington in time for pizza with Rudy & Patti. We were disappointed on two levels. With the dreary day and approaching of dusk we opted for the more direct way home from where we were and resigned ourselves to eat in Newberry at whatever place we could find. Luck was on our side though, willing to dine in a Hardee’s or a Subway, we stumbled on The Flying Pie on Main St and had a wonderful pizza about half way between the thin crust of West One in Hendersonville and the thick Chicago style pie in Lexington.
Saturday by the numbers:
299 – Miles driven on the day
98,000 – Total miles now on the Emperor
1 – Tank of gas used
5 – O’clock wake up call
14 – Hours from leaving home until returning
58° – High for the day, 20 below normal
9 – Cars in a line (7 Miatas, 1 Boxster and a Jeep)
11 – Mile train ride (5-1/2 under steam power)
100 – Pounds of coal burned by the train per mile traveled
8 – Caches found
3 – SC County Challenge caches and
2 – DeLorme Challenge pages finished
After a couple of weeks languishing on the eastern bypass of Aiken and setting tongue’s a wagging all over town, the biggest thing, literally, to hit town has moved on. We know this because on our way back from Hendersonville this afternoon we were stopped by a huge commotion of cop cars and 18 wheeler trucks in the town of Johnston. The 1.2 1.89 million pound generator (according to an earlier referenced Aiken Standard article) and its entourage was parking for the night at the corner of SC 121 & SC 191.
