Dumb Things I’ve Done

Hide and Seek

Back in October Donna and I went to the Fall Steeplechase with a couple of couples from the Miata Club. Our house was the meeting point so we could walk over to the field together and all our “tail-gating” stuff could be carried over in one pickup truck. We had an exciting time at the track and one last bit of excitement once we got back to the Bogardus Estates at the end of the day. I wrote about it on the Masters Miata Club site, here is the final paragraph of the event wrap-up there, reprinted below with the permission of the author, me:

The truck riders and walkers home arrived at Boardman Road at about the same time and when Donna entered the code on the remote garage door opener – it didn’t open. Thinking she may have fat fingered a number, she tried again. It didn’t open. She waited about 15 seconds, cycled the cover open and then closed before trying the code again. Still nothing. Brian then tried it and got the same no response. We even told Jennie and let her try. Time for Plan B, open a regular person styled door with a key. Well, Brian carried his Miata key chain but it has no house key. Donna’s key chain does have a house key, but she didn’t take her purse, it was inside the house. Spare key hidden outside somewhere? Nope (that is a whole other story.) Fortunately a local locksmith was happy to come out and do the rescue.

This is the whole other story. I was lying when I said nope to having one of those Hide-A-Key things with a spare hidden outside, we did, we just didn’t know where to find it.

It used to be inside the old gardening shed, but when that was torn down in August I took it and hid it somewhere else. The six of us wandered all over the back yard looking for any place a magnetic key holder might be hidden with no luck. Somewhere in there I had what I thought was a eureka moment and checked under the bird feeder only to be disappointed. I tried it there, but Donna couldn’t reach that high, so it had to go somewhere else. I even looked under a bunch of old leaves alongside the stairs to the deck, because this was one of the spots where we had hid a key before it went into the shed. After about 15 minutes of looking without success we called that locksmith.

Fast forward to today. The temperature climbed into the upper 60s so Donna and I went out to the screened porch in what will probably be the last time to enjoy it until next spring. As we made our way to our chairs Donna noticed some strange dust in several places on the table we have our portable gas grill sitting on. When I started to look around to see what I could see, what should I spot stuck to the bottom of the grill, but that missing Hide-A-Key. I must have stuck it there after taking it off the bird feeder.

The best part of this whole story is, that all the time we spent looking for where I had hid the key, the whole time we spent waiting around for the locksmith to show up, what we needed to open a door was right at our feet. The gas grill had made the trip to the steeplechase races and was off-loaded from the back of the pickup truck. It was sitting right there on the driveway in front of the garage door.

So now we have one Hide-A-Key hidden somewhere entirely new (which I promise I have committed to memory) and one back up set in a drawer in the house.

Wendover Will

On Day 12 of our 2018 Jumbo Road Trip we spent the night in the town of Wendover, Utah. The town sits right on the border between Utah and Nevada and just across the literal line in the sand sits the town of West Wendover. In 1952 West Wendover, Nevada replaced a bright light on a tall pole that State Line Service (a cobblestone service station), right on the border, had used to attract visitors with a 64 foot tall mechanical cowboy outlined in neon lights.

Probably hundreds of thousands of people have taken pictures of Will and even themselves with Wendover Will over the years, but now the town has created a page where if you submit a selfie photo with him they’ll post it with a digital pin on the map of where your from. I, of course, thought it sounded like fun, so I took a picture. It is not a very good picture overall and shows that I need a lot more practice at the selfie thing. Take a look and see if you can find me: Wendover Will Visitor Map

Soul Brother Number 1 and Gawky White Guy Number 38,776,391

1. Set trip odometer to zero
2. [odometer]
3. S
4. “South S. C. 230”
5. L
6. [car and “JACKETS STADIUM”] (NOTE: may be easiest to pull off on right for photo)
7. L at T
8. R
9. “CARETTA” {off course clue: traffic light}
10. R

Above are the first 10 instructions for this year’s Masters Miata Club Road Rally/Photo Scavenger Hunt put on by David & Ellie Brock. Guess which one we screwed up on?

The event was titled the “I Feel Good” Rally because instead of last year’s rural roads we were going to be treated to a more urban route around the Godfather of Soul’s adopted home town of Augusta, Georgia and three of the nine photos needed were James Brown related.

Did you guess number one? You’d be wrong and frankly we’re insulted, it took us all the way until number four before we went off course. And that was totally my fault.

We both saw #4, the SC230 sign, my navigator wanted to turn left, but I was locked onto #6 and was sure we needed a photo in front of the new Augusta Greenjackets stadium. Obviously the rally organizers must have missed this particular sign and we were supposed to turn left after we saw the next SC230 sign. About a mile and a half later, there was another SC230 sign. While thinking that it was still too soon to turn, it dawned on the idiot driver, i.e. me, that the North Augusta High School nickname is the Yellow Jackets. Doh! That meant that first left was the correct turn, so I made a u-turn and headed back.

Now, having traveled 3 miles too many, we were back on track. For the photo required for #6, I of course, didn’t pay attention to the note (may be easiest to pull off on right for photo) and navigated our lowered Miata at a sharp angle, so as to not scrape, through a fairly deep drainage ditch to park on the left side of the road and right under the sign. I had to repeat the process to get back out and then pull a u-turn to get back going in the right direction. We then successfully navigated instructions seven and eight.

It fell apart again at #9 though when the navigator mis-interpreted the word CARETTA as an off-course marker, not the next instruction, so we took the wrong right turn. We then spent way too many miles driving around a random subdivision trying to make every intersection fit our mistaken interpretation of instruction #11. When we finally made it back to the road we turned off of, turned right to continue in what we hoped was the right way, and then took what we hoped was the correct right turn. It wasn’t. We then drove a loop of Marion Avenue 3 times, twice in one direction and once more in the opposite.

Crap. We were about to just pack it in, when Donna said, look up in your phone for instruction #19, St. Joseph Hospice and we can get back on track by taking #20’s right turn. This was a great idea until we found #19’s sign. It was at a crossroads and because we weren’t sure which direction we were supposed to be approaching the course marker from we had 4 different possible right hand turns to choose from. So we grabbed a lifeline. Because this was the Brock’s second rally for the Club and they were familiar with the caliber of minds involved, this year they included a few course correction GPS coordinates throughout the instructions.

We didn’t have to use any of the other 3 course correction clues, but we did have to Google one location to get back on track. In a subsequent foray off course, we used some local knowledge to get back to where we needed to be. We started as the second car and were the third car to finish. Although the five cars were started 3 minutes apart, we passed our other four competitors, coming or going, at least once and a couple cars more than once. At one point there were three of us together on Telfair Street waiting on the passing of a mile long freight train creeping along 6th Street.

The object of the rally was to take the nine required photos while covering the course in as close to the baseline mileage of 19.0 as possible. Only four of the five cars made it to the finish line. We ended up in second place. The winners, like us, had all the right photos, but they traveled one tenth of a mile fewer than Donna and I did. Before you go, “Awww, so close,” our total mileage was 31.0! A full 63% further than we should have had, meaning there were twelve extra miles of opportunity to shave a couple of tenths off our total…like the big one, ignoring instruction #4 or even the little right hand side of the road note in instruction #6 above.

Curiosity (Nearly) Killed the Mini (Part II)

When we last left our intrepid hero, he had just nudged the plastic case of the socket set enough to knock it off it’s convenient resting place and spill the entire contents into the engine bay…

Go back and read Part I first, I’ll wait.

After putting everything back in the case, turns out most everything had tumbled right through to the driveway below, but I was still missing the the 3/8 to 1/4 adapter and the 5, 6, 7, 8 & 9mm sockets. I could see a glimmer of one socket underneath the padding of an A/C line at the bottom of the engine compartment, but of course I couldn’t reach to get to it from the top. I was going to have to jack up the car to get underneath to look around, but that was going to have to wait as it was past suppertime and would soon be getting dark.

The next day I dropped Donna off at the gym in the Miata so I could have a couple hours to try and retrieve the missing socket set pieces. Of course the Mini has a whole different jack point configuration to prop it up. Minis have a heavy plastic walled open square thing to place your jack onto, but it isn’t shaped to hold the top of a v-shaped jack stand, which I have two of, nor is it the right size to accept to flat pad jack stand which I also have two of.

To get the Mini up in the air, I used the same method I use jack up the Miata. By placing an 18″ length of 2 x 4 centered under the door mirror and placing the pad of the hydraulic jack in the middle of the wood piece you can the the whole side of the car up in the air enough to place the jack stands. To keep the Mini up I placed the flat topped jack stands under the 2 x 4 near the front. When I was finished doing this to both sides, the car was resting on the back wheels with the front end of the car some 10 inches off the ground.

This nose high attitude shook loose two of the missing sockets and a quick crawl underneath let me retrieve the one socket I could see along with another one that was right next it. I discovered a couple of small panels behind the bumper that were held in by threes screws, so I removed them to see if that would help locate the rest of my missing pieces. Nope, nothing from one and all I got from the other was several ounces of car wash water. I crawled back out from under the car and placed the found sockets in their respective holes in the socket set case. I was still missing the 5mm socket and the 3/8 to 1/4 adapter. As I looked at empty spots in the case I realized that the 5mm space has been empty like forever, so really all I was still missing was the adapter.

I removed the grill hoping that it might help, but that just let me see the A/C condenser and radiator better, no other obvious nooks or crannies that would hide a shiny chrome adapter. I dropped the car off the jack stands and started it up.When this did not result in any loud metallic clanking I put it in reverse, dumped the clutch, roared back 20 feet and slammed on the brakes. Then put it in first gear to repeat that process going forward. I had the windows down and didn’t hear metal hit the ground, but got out and looked the length of the driveway in case. No adapter. The next step was a quick jaunt around the neighborhood throwing the car into several 90 degree turns with abandon. The windows were still down and I never did hear any rattles or see anything fall off.

My guess is that the adapter is wedged somewhere really good and the next owners will discover it in a far future engine rebuild or the damn adapter was, like the 5mm socket, AWOL before this whole episode started.

Curiosity (Nearly) Killed the Mini (Part I)

Last week I mistakenly thought the falling pine pollen was through for the season, so I decided to wash the several levels of yellow that had accumulated on the Mini. When drying the car off afterwards I raised the hood to towel up any water that might have settled under there and might drip down the exterior when next driven. Because this is like only the third or fourth time I have had the hood up, the first couple were battery related, I looked around a bit.

The battery sits on the left side up against the firewall, under the windshield, and to see it you have to lift a plastic flap. Well, there is another little plastic flap on the driver’s side too. Hmmm, I wonder what’s under there. I unsnapped the top and there was a small reservoir. Looks like it could be for windshield washer fluid. I unscrewed the cap and as I was lifting it off it slipped out of my hand and dropped down. It wasn’t for washer fluid, it was for brake fluid. This became obvious to me when I looked down to find where the cap was, it was tucked neatly underneath the brake booster.

In every other car I have owned or worked on this would not be a problem as the master cylinder and booster have been there in the wide wide open space in front of the firewall. In the Mini there is an enclosed area that runs along the whole firewall that hides the battery on the left and the brake componentry on the right. There was no way to retrieve the cap through the small opening of the flap, there was barely enough room to unscrew the cap.

The plastic cowl cover is in two pieces. The passenger side piece where the battery sits is about 1/3 long while the driver’s side piece covers the remaining 2/3. It tucks under the windshield at the back and at the front it snaps into the plastic front wall of the enclosure and a rubber gasket is pressed onto that to seal the elements out. This picture is not of the Ladybug, but it close enough to show what I’m talking about:

To get in there I needed to pull off the rubber seal, undo the two nuts that hold down the cowl on the driver’s side, separate the top plastic piece from the front one by pulling up hard to unsnap them, then squeeze my arm down in between to blindly poke around hoping to find the errant cap. There was just enough room to get in there, but not enough to get to where I needed. To do that I was going to have to remove the driver’s windshield wiper.

Try as I might it wouldn’t come free. So instead I pulled the passenger side of the cowl off hoping to free the left end so I could get just a little more room. That is when I discovered that the front plastic piece could be lifted off enough from the left side that I could actually slip my arm in to grab the cap. At this point I was bleeding in a couple of places on each arm from scratches with only one requiring a band aid.1

With the cap back on I was no longer swearing under my breath, and occasionally out loud, about selling the %#$!@% car. Then, when I went to reach for the 13mm socket wrench to put everything back together, I nudged the plastic case of the socket set just enough to knock it off it’s convenient resting place on the exhaust manifold shield and spill the entire contents into the engine bay. Double %#@$!

To be continued… in Part II

Trash Compactor

Ninety-two per cent of Americans believe it is important to wash your hands after using the bathroom, but only 66% actually do it. And almost 70% of the folks that do wash, skipped using soap. So, of the last 10 people that used the rest room before you, you would be lucky if maybe 2 washed their hands with soap.

So I can see why the people who do wash their hands, soap or not, exit the restroom using a series of complex dance steps. They dry their hands with paper towels, reach for the door handle with the hand that has the damp paper towels, pull the door open, stop the door from closing with their foot, and then reach back to toss the paper into the trash can.

This leads to the trash cans getting full fairly fast because there is a lot of air in between all those paper towels. The bathroom trash cans here at ASCO get emptied twice a day, once in the morning and then again really late afternoon. So, if I use the restroom just before lunch or mid-afternoon the cans are almost full or in some cases overflowing.

For the last couple of weeks, I have taken it upon myself to play trash compactor. If I’m alone in the rest room2 I’ll put my right foot in front of the door (so it can’t be opened into me), raise my left foot into the trash can and squish all the air out from in between the waste paper. I then perform the above-mentioned exit maneuver to leave the room.

Inattention Giveth and Inattention Taketh Away

We went to Bed, Bath & Beyond on Monday to buy a couple of new pillows. We have two different sleeping styles, so we usually buy two different styles of pillows. I am a stomach sleeper and Donna is side or back sleeper, so I get a regular pillow and Donna gets a thicker one. Mine is $10 cheaper. I plopped both pillows down on the counter and the kid checking us out didn’t really pay attention, so he just scanned one pillow twice. It was my cheaper pillow he scanned, so in essence we were gifted ten dollars.

Later on we did a little mop-up shopping at Krogers. As we usually do whenever we are not doing our weekly shopping, we used the self-checkout. Donna asked if we should go to the express line because we had a coupon, but I waved her off noting that there was a clerk at the station. Donna also recommended I take $20 cash out for the work week, I agreed. I was buying wine, so I knew I’d have to show ID and scanned the first 4 items, saving the alcohol for last knowing that I wouldn’t be able to go any further until the attendant came over and looked at my license. Beep! “Attendant Has Been Notified To Assist You.” The attendant didn’t hop to, she was tapping away on her phone possibly making plans for when she got off shift, so I went to her. She came back, scanned my ID, then scanned the coupon before heading back to her station and texting. I grabbed the bags, the receipt and another $5 off coupon for my next wine purchase. It wasn’t until we got home that I remembered I never picked up the $20 bill.

Karma? Had pointed out the ten dollar undercharge at B,B & B would I have remembered the twenty at Krogers?

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 06/25/15: 190