Cars

Miatas at the Gap

What started as one woman’s off-the-cuff invitation to Miataphiles in the general area has morphed into a pilgrimage of sorts to worship the great road of the sports car.

Nine years ago 44 cars came to the Lodge. Word of mouth (and internet mailing lists) caused a jump in attendance to 144 the next year by year five the estimates of attending cars grew to over 500. The first year we all stayed at the same place, year 2 it expanded to some of the local hotels in the nearest town, Robbinsville, NC. By the fifth, people had to find accomodations as far as 75 miles away and if you wanted to stay at the meeting place, the Tapoco Lodge, you had get on a waiting list that was pages long.

The 5th was the last Donna and I attended, it had gotten too big, too unruly and too not about what it once was. but we still missed it and every year we would say to ourselves, let’s go up, even just for Saturday. But the trip is 5 hours in each direction and walk up motel rooms are non existent, so we never go. This year we found a way and went.

We only saw a few Miatas in downtown Robbinsville where we had lunch. We passed a couple on our way north to “Miata Central.” The parking lot at the Tapoco Lodge was packed as always. The driveway in was lined on both sides by Miatas leaving just enough room for one lane of traffic. We just parked at the end and walked in avoiding the hassle. We saw met up with the one couple from the Master’s Miata Club that still goes every year and chatted with them a bit.

While we were standing there all of a sudden in shows up a new can’t be bought yet, 2006 MX-5. Like flies on cow poop, soon you couldn’t even see the car for the crowd of people it attracted. After we left and way too late to do anything about it I thought I should have taken a picture of the crowd to post here with the caption “New Miata!”

After the crowd thinned around the new car I wandered over and had a sit in the driver’s seat for a minute or two. Here is my incomplete 100 word or less review:”The seats have a lot more bolstering than the older cars. While the door sills are probably only an 1″ or so higher it felt more Boxster-like than Miata-ish at first. Parked next to a lowered red NA it looked like a lot bigger car too. When I went from an NA to NB it was seamless, everything was slightly more modern looking, but it was pretty much the same car. This, on initial impression, seems a very different car, but I’ll have to drive it to know for sure.”

After that we hooked up with Ernest and Cheryl again. We drove over to the nearby Fontana Village wondering if that was were a lot more Miatas were because they agreed with us, it didn’t seem as heavily attended as in previous years. On the 15 mile drive over, we past several small groups of Miatas, but not the usual gaggle. At Fontana we found maybe a half dozen Miatas scattered over the big complex. There we split up, they headed back to the Tapoco and we headed south back to Anderson.

We drove all the way up and didn’t even drive the fabled road. That is very OK for 2 reasons: 1) We are going back in September with the Master’s Club and 2) getting a great big ol’ heaping dose of driving the surrounding roads is just as much fun. Just don’t get stuck behind an old man in a big Lincoln with Florida plates.

Started up, went down, back up, back down, up again, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 246

Raindrop Roulette

The last couple weeks there has been a 40% chance of afternoon thundershowers nearly every day. For the longest time my rule of thumb has been, 40% chance of rain and higher, the top goes up while at work. After not having it rain during the day for the last couple of weeks with those kinds of numbers, I got tired of burning my hands on interior bits for the drive home, so on Thursday and today we left the top down and used the cockpit cover.

Seeing as I’m still a little gun-shy from the dousing received a month ago, I have kept the Weather Channel‘s local radar running in a browser in the background. I check it about every 15 minutes. Both afternoons there have been numerous thundershowers pop up around Aiken county, but thankfully none have blossomed right over ASCO. Today with just 15 minutes left in the workday a small spot of green appeared over where I think we are on the map, so I went to the nearest window to take a peek outside. Mmmm, looks sunny. Not wanting to take any chances that green would grow to yellow/orange/red, signifying massive water from the sky, I hustled Donna out the door as fast as possible. As we left, the parking lot was dry, but the cars near the front of the lot had water on the horizontal surfaces. Sure enough it had rained, not hard enough to breach the protection of the cockpit cover though.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 237

25,000 Peaches

And about 10 Shriners on Go-Karts. The Emperor passed the 25,000 mile mark on the way to the Ridge Peach Parade this morning. It was organized chaos, both in the manner of go-kart driving in front of us and at the start when the “float” markers weren’t out on time, so we just kind of lined up where we thought we should be. Coincidentally there were 10 Miatas in the parade following right behind the Shriners. Although we would have liked to have done some of the maneuvers that the go-karts were doing, and Miatas are small cars, our turning radius is not that tight.

Shriners

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 191

Ready, Set, Tops Up!

There was no chance of rain in the forecast for today, which made the dark clouds to the west a big surprise on our afternoon walk. Donna asked if we should put the top up as we strolled past the car. I poo-pooed the idea as they didn’t really look that bad and the cockpit cover was firmly in place.

About 45 minutes later my manager came over and asked if I was going to put my top up as it was looking rather dark out (he, naturally, has a window.) I said no, but when he said he was going to put his up, I changed my mind. How could I explain myself if it did happen to pour down and his car stayed dry and my interior got soaked?

Russ used to have a Miata, but ever since he traded to the Boxster he has taken to parking out in the north forty along with me. He leaves a spot between us, just like two guys going to the movies together would leave an empty seat in between them. He used a cockpit cover with his Miata and now he also uses one for the Porsche. It would be a fair race to see who got their top up first.

We got to our cars at the same and started removing the covers. His uses velcro straps at both windshield wipers and both doors to go with the tabs in the back trunk. Mine has one velcro strap on the driver’s wiper, 2 elastic hooks under the door sills and two hooks in the rear wheel well to go with the three tabs in the truck. He held a slight lead in storing the cockpit covers in our trunks, as I unsnapped the boot and folded it, he was already inside holding the button down to start the mechanical ballet. His back hard boot piece was up and the z-fold rising as I opened the two latches and lifted the Miata roof into place. As I latched my top, his was electrically locking in. Our power windows raised almost in total unison. Our drivers doors shut as one.

Dead heat.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 129

Side Maker Lights

I only did the rear side marker light mod today at tech day. I decided against the blinking side markers because, at least for the rears and maybe the fronts, if you make them turn signal indicators they would lose the parking/running light ability, which is what I really wanted.

Today’s Tech Day could have been called Electrical Tech Day as most of the work done was to the wiring of the cars. I did the side marker thing, 2 folks added air horns and two folks did the power window switch repairs. One member took the discarded stock horn from an’04 with new air horns and added it to their existing stock ’90 to double their noise value for free.

I guess I’ll go add the $8.46 I spent on parts to the BTR Equipment Package list.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 55

Beaufort & Back

In June I’m leading the Master’s Miata Club on a trip to the Hwy21 Drive-In in Beaufort. We are going to be joined by the Low Country Miata Club from Charleston. Last year the 2 clubs got together to go to the only other drive-in in operation in SC, The Big Mo, just up the street from us in Monetta.

Today, Donna and I took our first fact finding mission to Beaufort. We left Aiken at 9:00 AM and it took 2-1/2 hours to make it there, with 2 small breaks. This seems like a good start time, as it will get us into town around lunch. After lunch, activities will probably be walking around the historic downtown, shopping or just sitting around the waterfront. Mid afternoon we will drive to the hotel and check in, maybe freshen up before heading over to the drive-in to get in line so we can get good parking spots.

The drive-in is about 5 miles from the historic district and is across from the Marine Corp Air Station. You can’t miss it as they have a huge sign right on US21 visible for about a mile in either direction. The drive-in is about 200 yards down a side road. Because they also do a flea market thing on Saturdays during the day it was open, so Donna and I stopped in for a visit. The first thing you notice is that it is a lot bigger than the Big Mo. There are 9 rows for cars where as Mo has 6, maybe seven. The concession stand and the restroom facilities are light-years improved over the Big Mo’s. They are bigger, brighter and better kept up. We chatted with the owners a bit, told them we were coming with a car club in June. They seemed very friendly. When we told them where we were from they of course asked if we knew of the Big Mo. These guys are only coming up on one year of drive-in ownership, so when they were starting out they of course visited the Boaz’s at the Big Mo to get pointers on running a drive-in. As a matter of fact the FM transmitter they use for the movie audio is the Big Mo’s back-up unit. The cool thing about the Hwy21 is that they didn’t actually need the transmitter, but felt they should have one for modernization, because nearly all of their corded speakers still work!

We thought at first we would try to stay in a B&B. That might have been an expensive proposition and we were not too sure that the Miata Club folks would want to go that way. Plus it seems a shame to stay at a place like that when you are really getting a short night sleep and leaving, what with staying out late at a drive-in. A B&B should be savored. There is a Best Western right in the historic district, so we went inside to check it out. They were already all booked up for the Saturday night in question anyway. For kicks we asked the price, $139 to $169. Yikes! Those B&B’s are not sounding so expensive after all. When we left town we drove back the way we came and there are about 6-8 chain motels in between downtown and the drive-in. There was a Country Inn and Suites that looked promising. When we got home we went to the internet to check prices and they are $115 a night. Ain’t nothing cheap.

More research is required. I envision at least one more day trip in our future. Cool thing is I now have a Beaufort phone book, no I didn’t steal one from a phone booth, they had them as giveaways at the Visitor’s Center. While we were they we also picked up a bunch of menus from restaurants in town. In tomorrow’s installment I will tell you all about lunch in Beaufort…

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 25

Mod Fever

I’ve got a C note earmarked for Miata mods burning a hole in my pocket.

I started out going to buy some clear side markers for the front and some stealth turn signal bulbs. I would then pull off the yellow lamin-x fog light protectors, giving the front of the car a unified white light look.

Then I tossed around adding teeth again. I had some Alley Gator ones on the Laguna, so I would like something different this time. The only other one I really like is the Diablo, but in my travels along the Miata lane of the information superhighway this weekend I have come across two cars with those teeth installed, one of which is a Garnet Red! Are thet too popular or was this just a random happenstance.

My other thought is to go with something I saw on a car at the Rspeed Open House last year – A side mount for a front license plate with a Japanese tag on it. South Carolina doesn’t require a front tag, so if others can put a “GO COCKS!” tag on their cars…

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 14