Cars

4.5 Months To Go

Until Season 6 of TDTVS. They are already filming episodes in Hawaii and like the junkie I am I’m already reading the spoilers…

I had downloaded all the Season 5 vids from a back alley of the interweb and burned them onto DVDs. I lent these out to a co-worker a couple of weeks ago and yesterday he came up to me and asked what he needed to do to get another set of discs. Seems he has misplaced them. He has turned his office, home and cars inside out with no luck. Curiously a Neflix disc of Air Bud: Golden Receiver (AKA: Air Bud II) is also missing from his possession. Coincidence, I think not.

This Sunday is Episode 5 of TDTVS2 and AMC is going to run a mini-marathon of the first 4 episodes leading into numero cinco. Guess where I’ll be from 6:00PM until 11:00PM?

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 385

Dead Bugs in the Middle of the Car

2009 Bug Splat WinnersTonight was the MMC’s Annual Bug Splat Rally. With only five cars in attendance nearly everyone was assured of a prize. From left to right, John Nicholls, Closest to the Dot with his prize of Bullseye BBQ Sauce; Dave Schumacher with the Cleanest Car prize of Bug Stickers to use next year; Donna Bogardus with Bath Time Stickers to wash the Most Bugs off the nose of the Emperor and Denny Smith with the Trophy for Biggest Bug. If you look just to the right of the Big Bug on the Trophy you will see the ghostly apparition of Rudy Wilmoth who was the driver of the only car not to take home a prize. Don’t feel too sorry for Rudy as he and Patti are past winners of the coveted BBT and are just coming off a two year streak of winning the Cleanest Car.

Started up, went down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 356

Old Guys Almost Rule

1) Fifty-nine year-old Tom Watson almost won the British Open.

2) Thirty-seven year-old Lance Armstrong couldn’t hang with Alberto, but still is in 2nd place in the GC.

3) Fifty-three year-old Brian Bogardus can only seem to find half of the geocaches he is looking for.

Brian_the_Red found The Retirement Cache (Traditional Cache)
We were 2 for 2 on the Odell Weeks caches tonight after a pizza dinner at Ferrandos. Nicely done on the hide, been wondering when we would see one of these in action.

Brian_the_Red found Love Sports-Hook, Line and Sinker (Traditional Cache)
We were 2 for 2 on the Odell Weeks caches tonight after a pizza dinner at Ferrandos. We had never attempted these 2 at the Weeks Center for fear they would be right along the walking track and awfully hard to get stealth-fully. But we were pleasantly surprised that they were far enough away as to be easy to not get muggled.

Brian_the_Red couldn’t find “SECTION” (Unknown Cache)
Sometimes you get the cache and sometimes the cache gets you.

This one has got us stumped, we just can’t find stage 1. The cache owner has confirmed we solved the code right, so our coordinates are correct and he even gave us a small clue…

They say it takes a big man to admit defeat, well tonight I am a very big man.

Brian_the_Red couldn’t find Valor is a Virtue (Unknown Cache)
Didn’t get a chance to find the cache yesterday as we got a late start with this one and ran out of light to finish solving for the coordinates.

Came back today and went hunting for the cache. We spent quite a bit of time hiding in the bushes avoiding the surprising amount of cars driving by. While we were in there we looked with no success.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 300

93,000 Empty Seats

93,000 Empty SeatsWhile circling the Lowes Motor Speedway loop road looking for the registration building, the Emperor rolled past the 93,000 mile mark.

Today’s mission was a resounding success. We spent the morning watching all variations of cars race around 3/4 of the big oval and a t-shaped infield course at the Speedway. Lunch was a taste bud tantalizing mixture of red beans and rice with andouille for me and stuffed shrimp for Donna. That was after our appetizers of Crawdaddy Fondue Dip for her and Rat Toes for me (don’t worry, I saved you some Mark.) We found some nice light hikers for Donna that were cheaper than expected and we snagged three caches (1 at the race track and 2 near the mall.)

I even have the film I kiddingly promised, but it is so lame I won’t post it. I decided to use the camera and take a short video of our friends Miatas as they went by. The movie consists of about 3 seconds of cars flashing by and then the next 12 seconds are of my (and Donna’s) feet and legs as we walk away from the fence. I forgot to push the shutter a second time to stop the movie…

Started up, went down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 279

How Was Your Day?

I need to swap the bedroom set to the summer bedroom. I need to clean the pine pollen off the back deck. The garbage disposal in the kitchen has stopped working, so I need to take it apart and see what has jammed it up. I still have 12 days of vacation photos sort through.

So what did I do today? We went geocaching, on a Time Speed Distance Rally with the MMC, watched two episodes of West Wing and I’m listening to the FRS on the internet.

Oh, and I have to order a new battery for the Miata.

We finished a disappointing tied for fifth (out of 6 cars) in the rally this morning. We made one error due to a misleading statement from the rally masters misinterpretation and another because of a missed a clue. We felt that we had kept track of the time and mileage overruns, but even subtracting them from our totals we were still way over and lost big points. The capper was I worked a pounds to kilogram conversion the wrong way and blew the bonus question.

After lunch at the BBQ place one of the Club members had left his lights on and the car wouldn’t start. That is a picture of three of us trying to push start him. After about 4 or 5 attempts we gave up on that and went inside to see about borrowing some jumper cables. The jump start work its magic and off he went.

On the way home Donna and I stopped at a quick stop store in south Augusta to get a bottled water and a Sprite. When we got back in the car I turned the key and was met with silence. Hmm, did I have the clutch all the way in? Tried again and still nothing, but radio display flashed as I went by. The dome light was on, so I figured it wasn”t a dead battery. Funny thing was that with the ignition switch in the ACC position the radio display would flash and there was a clicking sound (like 2 relays) coming from the instrument cluster.

Pulled out the cell phone and called Rudy (AKA Clunk) (or is it Thunk) and his first thought was battery, even after I described the symptoms. He said hold on, I’ll get the truck and come take a look. Thirty minutes later Rudy and Patti pull up. He brought some wrenches so we could remove the battery and (for what I figured was for testing purposes) the battery out of his Mazdaspeed Miata. We swapped batteries and the car started right up. According to Rudy the newer batteries don’t give you any warning, like they used to in the olden days. now they just up and die. We called a couple places to see if they had any batteries for the car and one said we don’t carry ’em, called the dealer and the other had one, but for $90 and he was all the way on the other side of town. Rudy has his truck and Patti just got a new Lexus, so he let me babysit his battery for a while.

It is still going to cost a hundred bucks or so for the battery, but it won’t be a generic replacement from Autozone, it’ll be a quality Westco replacement that is designed for the Miata.

Thanks Rudy.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 180

Denver, CO

1344 miles from home.

Today’s road trip consisted entirely of I-70 across Colorado. Normally I consider Interstate driving the epitome of boredom, but this drive was anything but. When you start in Grand Junction the north side of the road is shadowed by 1,000′ mesas and soon that is joined by mesas on the other side. The road slowly rises in altitude and the flat tops turn into peaks. Now you are in a narrow valley twisting between mountains and the road keeps rising. Most of the time the pass is filled only with the Colorado River, I-70 and a set of train tracks.

We had originally intended to take I-70 partway and then dip down south following another route that would take us into Colorado Springs for the night. Try as I might using Google maps I could not change the route to go through Aspen. I checked road conditions and found out why, the road was still closed for the season. We then planned a slightly different route, but as it turned out we didn’t use that either. We only made it to Glenwood Springs (less than halfway) by lunchtime due to our usual late start and bush beating adventures, so the decision was made to just stay on I-70.

Donna decided that she wanted to help out driving, but she picked an inopportune time, soon the climbing got serious, there were numerous spots for trucks to pull over to put on their chains. We think that the road actually had 3 lanes as it wound it way upward, but the lines were worn off and there were deep ruts from said trucks and chains. She found a sort of sweet spot, but the slower trucks and faster cars made her nervous. Ever the trooper she made it to the next place where there was a rest stop and pulled in to let me drive, the top of Vail Pass at 10,600′. We used the restrooms before changing drivers and that in itself was an experience. There was snow piled 5-6′ high from clearing the parking lot and the facilities themselves were cave like as snow still covered almost all of the buildings windows.

From there the road smoothed out and the elevation actually dropped for awhile before starting to climb to the Eisenhower tunnels at over 11,000′. Once through the tunnels the road turned downward dropping to a more civil seven thousand feet or so and then dropping into Denver.

Four for four on caches today. That total might have been a few higher, but the route change removed quite a few from our list.

P.S. Can you tell by the length of this post that I had a bit more time to write about our day tonight than I have had the last couple?

Scottsbluff, NE

1328 miles from home.

Started our day at Mount Rushmore and this time we were more impressed.

Yesterday when we arrived in Keystone and checked into the hotel (mmm…cinnamon buns) it was already past closing time at the park. Restless, after unloading the car we took a drive towards the park to see if we could get a sneak peek on the road up. We followed a couple of cars right to the entrance booths. Stopped for a moment and then drove in. We got to the window and realized there wasn’t anybody in it, so we too drove in and parked. The viewing area was open, but none of the shops or displays were. We and about a dozen other people stood around taking pictures. Maybe it was that we could get so close to Devils Tower and the big heads were so far away that they didn’t seem that grand.

Today for some reason they seemed to be more, well, monumental. There is a trail that takes you closer to the mountain, but we could only get halfway around before we ran into a trail closed sign. It was still too icy. Because the place was practically deserted, we spent 20 minutes or more talking with one of the Rangers about the monument. Turns out she is originally from this area and after a 25 year career teaching, she returned to Mount Rushmore to become the head of Educational Services. She has an interesting connection to the monument, her grandfather was one of the four speakers at the mountain’s precarving dedication back in 1927.

Too much more to talk about, Crazy Horse Memorial, Custer State Park (where the buffalo roam and the dear and the antelope play), Carhenge, 4 geocaches with not enough time to write about them.