Instead of reprinting an article from the Miata Magazine’s usual gang of contributors this one caught my interest because of the Oregon connection. From the places and roads mentioned, I am guessing this takes place around Eugene which is around 150 miles northwest of me as the crow flies. The community college mentioned is more than likely Lane CC and currently there is no one there named Ben Hill. There is a Tami Hill that teaches Social Sciences that I suppose could be some relation… I then googled Magomet Tavkazakov and found a guy who was the head of a Russian juice company that Pepsi bought in 2008, but from the TASS photos he looks a little old to have been in a community college in 1995.

Miata Post-Cold-War Diplomacy

– by Member Benjamin Hill

Teaching math in an Oregon community college, the most exciting part of my work day is generalaly the commute – a winding nine miles of pine-studded foothills in the cockpit of my ’92 Miata. But the college grew more interesting recently, with the arrival of an exchange teacher from Nalchik, Russia, one Magomet Tavkazakov.

Students and staff were charmed by Magomet’s good looks and mischievous smile. Despite his not quite perfect English, he was an engaging conversationalist, and began dropping by my office each morning, eager to chat about geometry and metaphysics, or to marvel about life in America.

When an Oregon miracle occurred (sunshine on a winter weekend), I called Magomet at his exchange host’s house. “Want to go hiking?”

“Okay.”

Magomet was surprised when I arrived in the Miata, top down and resplendent in my motoring cap. “Wow,” he exclaimed, but recovered deftly, producing in rapid succession from his knapsack a pair of dark glasses, a jacket, and a bootleg Beatles cassette. He fastened his seat belt, inserted the cassette, and we were off and running to the cries of George Harrison’s guitar.

Exiting town by back roads, we skirted Fern Ridge Reservoir, roared up Greenhill Road to a gorgeous view of the Coast Range, then headed south on old Lorane Highway, famous for its scenery and switchbacks. Alternating pastures and hills gave the drive a catchy syncopation, speed counterpoised to cornering with frequent quick gear changes. Traffic amounted to occa­sional ranch trucks, providing perfect excuses for high rpm passing.

When the Beatles tape ended, Magomet replaced it with Russian rock n’ roll. For miles he was mostly silent, but when he did speak, it was to praise American geography or Japanese engineering. He voiced his heartfelt approval of motor travel “open to the environment,” and I nodded in total agreement.

In an hour, we rolled through the town of Cottage Grove, then headed toward the Cascade Range. Pastures gave way to tree farms which in turn gave way to groves of second growth fir. The road passed through former mining outposts of Disston and Culp Creek, then narrowed to a single lane with turnouts, plunging deeper into the forest as the air grew sweet and humid. Though narrow, the road was well-engineered and dry. The Miata ate it up. We met no traffic, but the possibility made an enjoyable challenge of blind curves. I approached each 60+ mph, breaking and downshifting, then accelerating through the arc on a disciplined line while prepared to react in the face of an oncoming log truck.

Ten miles of slalom curves later, a hand-lettered sign marked the fork to Bohemia Saddle. The road crossed a rickety bridge, turned to gravel, and began to climb radically. On steep coarse gravel, the Miata was out of its element. I pressed ahead anyway, maintaining steady speed and praying not to “high-center.” As the Miata churned along, I was reminded of North Dakota duck hunting trips taken years ago in a 1970 Super Beetle. The Volkswagen was a nightmare on those rutted, muddy roads. But it redeemed itself the time I sailed through an unmarked T-intersection, making a sort of foamed runway landing in a field of plowed mud. A heavier vehicle would have foundered in that bog. But with its sealed underbelly the Bug doubled as a sled. I blocked the accelerator at half-throttle, opened the door and pushed with my left foot while working the clutch with my right, and sort of swam out of that field. Now here I was, swimming through gravel in a freshly waxed Miata. What an idiot I am! – that is what I was thinking.

But the roadster was game. In a few minutes we emerged at the top of a ridge, and were rewarded by a view of volcanic snowcaps. I pulled onto a turnout, stopped the engine, and reached behind me to unsnap the canopy boot. I enjoy raising the Miata’s top while still behind the wheel, with a single over-the-shoulder right arm maneuver both macho and yogic, albeit less gentle to vinyl and flesh than the method described in the manual.

With the car secured, Magomet and I set off along the ridge, moving through stands of tall trees, and catching stunning alpine view. Traversing a patch of snow, we passed the base of a waterfall, and paused to taste edible sorrel plants. As we continued to walk, we exchanged geometry brain teasers:
•Why does a mirror reverse left and right, but not up and down?
•Where is a lost explorer who walks one mile south, one mile east, and one mile north, returning to the point where he began?

Back at the car in a couple of hours, we snacked and drove slowly back down the loose gravel grade. “I like your car,” observed Magomet, for the fourth or fifth time. “Do you have a car back home in Russia?” I asked. “I had one, but I sold it.” “What kind?” He smiled. “You will think this is funny. It was a Ford Granada I bought in Germany.”

When it came, solid pavement was a relief. I pulled over, killed the engine, and handed Magomet the keys. “You drive.” Over his half­hearted objections, I chased him from the passenger seat and hinged back the top. “Maybe I shouldn’t,” he said, but he was already adjusting the mirrors.

Magomet drove, cautiously at first, and then with more confidence, his grin widening with every gear change. Our conversation touched on mathematics again, but this time the humble mathematics of proportion: “1597 cc displacement per 1225 kilograms.”

Later that month, American and Russian astronauts would rendezvous aboard the Russian space station Mir. But as we glided along with Magomet at the wheel, I couldn’t help feeling that by way of post cold-war adventure/diplomacy, my friend and I took a back seat to no one aboard my Japanese roadster.

A Visit From The Pope

The first day of spring this year was the earliest it has been in centuries, March 19th. That was 5 days ago and if you plopped down in Klamath Falls today there would be no way to convince you that it was in fact spring. It snowed, including freezing snow or possible hail, off and on all day. Fortunately because it had been reasonably seasonal for the last week or so, there is nearly zero accumulation.

Ships in the Night

“Good night, dear” Steve said as he pulled the comforter over his shoulders and gave his wife a kiss.

“Good night…” Sandra wife responded sleepily.

This was one of Steve’s favorite times of the day. Work was five hours behind him and nine hours ahead of him. He had taken care of the kids after dinner, helped put them to bed, caught up on a bit of house work, and made a few calls after checking his voice mail. Lying in bed, waiting for sleep to come was a good time for him, alone. The turmoil of the day a distant hum, he can mull over the finer points of the day as he drifted off to dreamland. Not too much time for himself these days – work, wife, and kids kept him on his toes. These twelve or so minutes were his sole indulgence….

“You need a hobby,” Kevin said in a gruff tone. “I’ve got me one – trains. I built me up a set in the basement.”

Steve did not respond, he had heard this lecture before from his cohort. It was morning again, and the office was particularly intrusive today.

The last thing Steve wanted was advice.

“At night, after the house is asleep,” Kevin continued, undaunted “I go down to the basement and play with my trains. Sometimes for hours. Sometimes until breakfast. That’s my release…”

“When do you sleep?” Steve responded, not really wanting to encourage this line of conversation.

“That’s just the beauty of it,” Kevin piped back. “It’s so relaxing, that I don’t need those full eight hours. I can get away with as little as three, never need more than five.”

“You’re kidding,” Steve said incredulously, looking up.

“How long have you known me.”

“Six years now,” Steve shot back.

“Ever see me droopy-eyed? Slugging around after lunch? When you are fighting to keep your eyes open during the two o’clock hour, what am I doing?”

“You do your financials…” Steve said.

“Exactly. Sharp as a tack all day long, sleep like a baby at night,” Kevin said proudly. “But not until after I’ve had some me-time at the controls of Number 99.”

“A hobby…” Steve thought to himself.

On the train home that evening, Steve racked his brain. It had been years since he thought about a hobby. Golf? No time. Fishing? Too much equipment, kids still too young. Model building? “I’m a klutz with plastic cement,” Steve said to himself. What did he used to do as a kid? Not much. No sports, no musical instruments, nothing much except his sports cars. That old Triumph took all his time between fixing it and driving it.

Driving it. That was the thrill. “Boy,” Steve said to himself, “If I could just have that escape once a day, I’d sleep like a log.” He put the thought out of his mind. They could afford it, but when would he have time to drive a sports car? He’d never drive into the city for work. And he’d never leave a sports car parked at the depot all day while he was in the city. He needed that darned four door for his carpool. He was stuck. Two seaters and his current lifestyle would never mesh.

The train pulled to a stop at Arlington Station to let passengers off. Steve stared out the window blankly, counting cars stopped at the crossing. The second car back caught his eye – a yellow Mazda Miata. “Man,” Steve whispered. “That’s the ticket.” The train lurched and began to pull away. Steve’s eyes were locked on the Miata, tracking it solidly as the train accelerated down the track. Steve broke gaze with the little sports car and looked up the aisle at the hatted heads bobbing with his, nodding off, worn out from the grind. “I’ve gotta get a plan…” Steve muttered under his breath.

“Steve, it’s beautiful!” Sandra giggled. “It’ll be a great weekend car.” She was looking at the “new” used red Miata in their driveway.

“You can still drive a stick, can’t you?” Steve asked, reassuringly.

“Sure!” Sandra was excited for Steve. She knew he had been sacrificing so much over the past few years. Work was asking so much from him, he had little time for the family, much less time for a toy car. She was happy for him, even if just the idea of having a sports car brought him pleasure. She doubted if he would ever find time to drive it. Both of their schedules were jam-packed from seven in the morning until late at night. The thought of the Miata in the garage brightened her spirits, though. It was sort of like an optimistic promise of good times to come for both of them.

“Good night, dear” Steve said as he pulled the comforter over his shoulders and gave his wife a kiss.

“Good night…” Sandra wife responded sleepily. Steve stroked her hair for a while, thinking out his plan. When her breathing became deep and regular, he knew she was asleep. Her job and the kids wore her to a frazzle as well. This was just a time in their lives. Neither of them had a minute to themselves all day. Maybe she should get a hobby, Steve thought. Maybe he can get that promotion so she won’t have to teach.

He lifted her head off of his chest and laid it gently onto her pillow. He slipped out of bed, pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweater and headed down the upstairs hallway, being careful not to disturb any of the sleeping children. Down the stairs, through the kitchen, toward the garage. The family dog raised its head quizzically, wondering what was the reason for a break in the routine.

“Get used to it, old girl” Steve said. “I’ve got a hobby,now.” Steve opened the garage door and grabbed the new keys from the key bowl. He ran his hand over the hood of the Miata, admiring its lines in the dim light of the overhead light.

He started the engine and let it idle for a few minutes. He had only driven it home from the dealer – all in bad traffic. Now it was his turn. He backed the sports car out of the driveway, straightened out onto the road, and headed off into the night…

Up through the gears, chasing his high beams out of town, Steve was free. He made no plan or destination, just let the sweet sound of that engine whine as he traveled from hill to valley, the town lights now a distant glow over the trees. Turning left, turning right, it all came back to him. All of those years with his Triumph came rushing in like an old family album. He bonded that night, bonded with something deep inside him from his youth. Before the degrees, before the mortgage, before the diapers, he did have a hobby. Now he had it again. The smile never left his face that night.

His first excursion out he was only gone thirty minutes. As he slipped back under the covers, he snuggled his wife and was asleep in seconds. “This is going to work out fantastically…” was his last thought of the night.

The next morning he awoke refreshed, ready to go. Six hours of sleep used to cripple him, make him terminally irritable. But not today. “Let’s not make a judgment just yet,” Steve thought to himself. “It’ll take a week to see if I can keep this up.”

Steve kept up his nightly therapy for twenty days straight, weekends included. Each night went a little further out. He was amazed at the fun of it. No traffic. No cops. No deadline. He could drive anywhere he wanted, exploring the countryside like a kid. It became the one release of the day that kept him going. As long as he got back before Sandra woke up, it was his secret time for himself.

He had not started out with the intent to keep this from his wife. But after the third trip out, he decided that letting her know would spoil it somehow. In some small way it would imply the need for her consent. He knew she wouldn’t mind, but he liked it being his decision alone to go out.

The country roads surrounding their suburb were splendid at night. During the spring and summer months, the smells were fantastic. Even the autumn brought its own special feel, especially when the moon was full. All of the world was asleep, but Steve and his Miata were out having fun. It is amazing, Steve thought, how nice it is to wander around without anyone watching.

As the year began to close out, Steve was getting bolder in his travels. He found he could get deep into Virginia in ninety minutes and still make it back by three a.m. That had become his only new restriction to himself – that he would be in bed by three. Otherwise, he would become a zombie, hooked on his nighttime fixes. Virginia had some of the best two lanes in the country, and he explored every one he could find, one strip at a time. It was addictive and intoxicating. And he never felt healthier in his life.

“You’re looking pretty chipper,” Kevin noted one day at the office. “You got a new girlfriend?” he said, winking.

“Better yet,” Steve countered. “I’ve got me a hobby…”

Kevin smiled a knowing smile.

The little Miata performed beautifully, never missed a lick. Steve was averaging around one hundred miles a night, but he never kept track of the odometer. Some nights he began working on the car instead of driving it; changing the oil, giving her a wax job. It only took one night a month or so, and Steve found it to be just as therapeutic.

He and Sandra would take the car out on date nights now and then, when the babysitter was available. He would let Sandra drive. She was quite proficient with a stick shift, even showing off a heel-and-toe maneuver now and then. Steve was amazed how comfortable Sandra felt with the car, even with the few times she got to drive it. “This is some car,” Steve said out loud.

“Sure is,” Sandra replied with a gleam in her eye.

It wasn’t until one night, after Steve had made his rounds and gotten back into bed, that the whole picture came into view. One of the kids had a nightmare. Steve woke up and asked Sandra who was upset. He got no response from Sandra -the light was on in their bathroom and the door was closed. He decided to go check on the crying himself. He walked down the hall quietly, listening at every door until he found the upset child. It was simply a bad dream, and it only took a minute to get his three year old back to sleep. It was close to five a.m.. Steve debated if two more hours of sleep would do him any good, or if he should just go ahead and get up. He had only taken a short hop in the Miata that night, had gotten to bed by midnight. Sandra was still sacking out by ten each evening, exhausted.

Steve went down to the kitchen and made himself some coffee. While it was brewing, he stepped out the front door to get the paper, which should be on the curb by now. Stooping down to get the morning news, his ears caught a familiar sound. It was a sports car being wound out, each gear screaming full throttle. It made him smile. “Maybe someone else’s got a hobby,” he said chuckling.

He heard the sports car being worked, and then it grew quiet. He looked up and down the street and saw no one. “Must be on a side street,” he thought to himself as he turned back up his sidewalk. As he approached the front step a noise startled him. It was the sound of his garage door beginning to open. It was an eerie sight, seeing it open by itself like that. He stood open mouthed for a moment, then stepped down off of the stoop and slowly headed over toward the opening door.

Before he got five steps he was startled again – this time by the sound of a car coming down his street and turning into his driveway. To his amazement, it was a little red Miata just like his own, and it was headed into his garage. He reached out his hand and began to scream a warning – he was sure that the car was going to ram his Miata in the garage if it did not stop. His yell was halted by the sight of Sandra wheeling the sports car into the empty garage, smile on her face, family dog in the passenger seat with a similar grin.

He followed the car into the garage and stood behind the rear bumper. Sandra stepped out and gave him a peck on the check. He could smell her damp skin and the scent of pine in her hair. He looked into her eyes.

“You’re not the only one who needs a hobby, you know,” Sandra said. “And by the way, you need to keep up with the tire wear, you’re using more than your fair share.”

She turned on her heels and went in the house, leaving Steve and his hobby in the garage, his mouth as wide open as the garage door, leading out into the night…

Because I was a fairly early adopter of the Miata and joined the now long defunct Miata Club of America in the fall of 1989, I had a complete collection of the official Club publication, Miata Magazine. I used to take an article out of the magazine and reformat it for the Masters Miata Club website as each issue became twenty-five years old. I said “had” earlier because once I’d republished an article I dispose of that issue. The Master’s Club site still exists, but content has mostly stopped now because they moved to a FaceBook Group after I moved to Oregon. I thought maybe I might continue the tradition here, after all, I still have over 8 years worth of glossy Miata history sitting here gathering dust.

Leaning Against the Wall

By Norman Garrett III
Founder Miata Club of America
Concept Engineer Miata Project

There is a wall against which each car leans when it takes a corner, no matter what the speed. That is the wall of tire adhesion. I lean against that wall as often as I can, something inside of me likes the feel of it.

Mountain roads offer the most practice – narrow walls with tilting floors. Lean to the left, lean to the right, always the tension. I am never quite comfortable traveling down straightaways in the mountains, I like something to brace myself against. Sometimes it’s a perfect sweeper to the right, sometimes a tight hairpin to the left. Either way, I like the security of the seat bolsters pressing against my ribs. It lets me know that I’m driving a sports car. In a straight line most any car feels the same. Lean against the wall and the pedigree is clear.

We tested a lot of sports cars while developing the Miata. Some had very predictable “walls” during hard cornering. You could press right up against the chassis and tire limit and stay there all day. Other cars, cars that should have known better, could scare the sushi out of you.

The Porsche 911 has long had a reputation as a wily car at the limit. We had a black Cabriolet version in Hiroshima for a convertible top study (Nice top, takes 14 hours to build, five minutes to put up. Mazda found a better way on both ends). Taking the car out on the proving grounds was always a treat, if you knew the ropes. We called the 911 the “spider” because it knew when to bite.

Come into a corner hot, brake hard in a straight line, turn in gently for a late apex, slowly lift the throttle, clip the apex and accelerate out. This routine worked great on most any rear drive car. Try it on a 911 and you’ll be clipping roadside vegetation with your rear bumper. The rear end swings wide and then around in a public display of expensive over-steer.

The problem comes from the 911’s rear suspension – it likes to have power put to it. That takes foreknowledge and guts. I tried it according to Stuttgart and found that it works, and works well. Come into the corner hot, brake in a straight line, turn in for a late apex, squeeze the throttle open long before the apex, have it fully floored at the apex and hold on. They told me to try for 10% more throttle than I thought I could handle. The car loved it, I was forced up against the door panel by the g-force. Once I teased the spider by lifting the throttle at the apex. Pulled back a bloody stub of an ego, redecorating the Miyoshi test track with spirographic black lines.

We wanted to know these sorts of things so the Miata would have performance, but not quirks. Most car manufacturers dial in a fair amount of under-steer (the front wheels turn, but the car follows lazily behind) for safety reasons. Almost anyone can deal with a car that wants to go wide in a turn. Few drivers can react quick enough to a car that dives to the inside of a turn, rear wheels skidding. Somewhere in between is a safe but fun sports car setting that excites the owners, but not the lawyers. For the Miata, we wanted to keep the “edge” but without the cliff.

We tested Lotus’, MG’s, Alfa’s, Porsche’s, Corvettes, etc. to find how others had done it. Some were great at the limit. Many were disappointing, a few were scary. Some well-respected cars lulled you into a sense of complacency that was false, and therefore dangerous.

The Porsche 944 was one of these, an interesting contrast to its older brother. Hailed as “the best handling car” at the time by Car and Driver magazine, the 944 was a popular car in its day. It was much easier to set up in a turn than the 911 and yielded great fun for the average driver. Owners lauded its “predictable and stable” handling. Problem was, its “wall” had a trap door.

One test trip had taken us to our favorite loop up in the high desert of Southern California. There is a fifteen mile public road course near Pearblossom we would test cars and tires on and against. On one trip we had one of many test drivers from Mazda japan who fell in love with the 944 in our test fleet. Lap after lap he circled the course, driving diligently but hard, looking for any holes in the “wall”. Each time he would stop, he said he was feeling something on the sweeping ninety-degree turn at the back of the course, but he had not found it yet. We sent him out again and again, like some Costeau ship sending divers down for treasure. At the end of the day, we sent him out for one last lap as the light was beginning to fade. Off he sped in search of some chink in the Porsche armor. We knew he had found it when he came back thirty minutes later – on foot.

It turns out that if you push a 944 to its limit, it can bite. Mazda rolled two more 944’s into balls during the later development of the RX-7. It appears that the trap door moves around on the 944.

Testing continued on all sorts of cars. Surprisingly, one of the best cars came from in-house: the second generation RX-7 Turbo. With stiffer bushings and shock absorbers, the RX-7T’s balance was very nice, the wall was broad and strong. You could lean right up against it any time, it was an easy wall to find and a hard one to upset. To accomplish this, Mazda had created over 120 patentable ideas to stabilize the rear suspension. Don Runkle of Chevrolet called it “complicated”. Buyers called it wonderful.

When it came time for the Miata, classical choices were the order of the day. By using a double wishbone suspension at all four corners and carefully balancing the weight distribution front to rear (and side to side), the Miata needed zero patents to achieve the same goal.

Particularly with a good set of tires, the Miata’s “wall” is broad and tall, and always where you expect it to be. Lift off of the throttle in the middle of a hard corner? No problem, the Miata will take up just a bit of slack in your radius. Punch the throttle any time you like, the chassis will take heed and move along nicely, even if you’ve hot-rodded your engine.

The Miata combines two of the most difficult traits in a sports car, tossability and predictability. That makes for the essence of spirited driving for us enthusiasts and trophy material for hundreds of dominating showroom stock racers. Pretty good for an affordable sports car, eh?

So next time you’re on a curvy road or cloverleaf, remember this discussion. Gently play around, lean up against the wall a bit. Years of development and a few sacrificial Porsches have paved the way for you to have fun, safely.

Vroom with A View

By Barbara Feinman

BANGOR, MAINE – There aren’t a lot of people in Maine, and there are even fewer Miatas. In fact, there isn’t a surplus of much up here, except lovely views, black flies, cheap lobsters, and good roads to explore.

For as long as I can remember I’ve had this romantic notion of living in New England, driving along winding coastal roads, a perfect blend of nature and technology. So when the executive editor of The Bangor Daily News asked me to come be the newspaper’s summer writing coach, I accepted immediately, visions of lighthouses and Longfellow preoccupying my thoughts.

When it was time to leave Maryland I stuffed clothes, books, etc. into every square inch of my Miata, setting out on the longest trip I’d ever driven solo–more than 700 miles. Because I have a highly developed aptitude for losing my way I make a point of bringing along a navigator on excursions farther than the video store. But there wasn’t room for a passenger and I knew, once and for all, it was time to confront my cartophobia.

“It’s easy,” my sister said, “You don’t even need a map. Just go north. If you hit Canada you’ll know you went too far.”

Thanks for the advice, sis.

A few days later I arrived in Bangor–a sprawling metropolis famous for Paul Bunyon, home of horror writer Stephen King, and also the final stop on Greyhound’s bus line.

My boss had invited me to stay at his home until I found a place to live. Before I began my apartment search I needed a day of acclimation–get my bearings, as my father would say. Come to think of it, I’ve yet to see my father lose his bearings. He’s the kind of guy who drives with one of those dashboard compasses; not because he needs it, but just in case.

When I turned the key to get in the trunk the latch failed to release. My boss gave it a try. Still no action. There’s nothing like not being able to get at your toothbrush after spending two days on the interstate.

“I read about this in a Miata newsletter,” I told my boss, jiggling the key compulsively. “Defective trunk locks are not unheard of.” It was Saturday. Forty-eight hours till I could seek professional help. And of course, I noted to myself wearily, my warranty had run out. This was not boding well, karma-wise, in terms of my summer.

Monday morning first thing I drove over to the Bangor Mazda dealership. I went into my routine about how the trunk lock must have been defective, that it shouldn’t matter that the warranty had run out… The mechanic was silent as I went on and on. Finally he said, “Yup, I’ll have a look at it.”

About two minutes later he came and found me in the waiting room. “You want to see what was wrong with your trunk?”

I jumped up and followed him.

He stuck the key in the lock, smirked, and then the trunk popped open. Goose feathers flew everywhere.

“Err, I guess I packed it a little too tight,” I said, removing the culprit.

“I guess so,” he agreed, blowing a feather away from his face. “It jammed the lock.”

“Yeah,” I said, flushed. “So how much do I owe you?”

“Nothing,” he replied. “Welcome to Maine.”

As I drove off, pillow now safely stashed in the front seat, I looked in my rearview mirror and saw he was watching me drive away, laughing and shaking his head.

“Welcome to Maine,” I mumbled, remembering the state slogan while plucking a goose feather out of my hair, “The way life should be.”

After I got the trunk situation resolved it was time to find a home. I circled an ad in the classifieds: “Reliable, responsible roommate needed. Room available in horse farm.” Horse farm, huh? Now that would he a Maine experience.

Forty-eight hours later I found myself settling in to my new room at the Horse Of Course horse farm in Winterport, an old village along the Penobscot River. My roommates were to be eight horses, a beagle, an Irish Wolfhound, a barn cat, and one extremely nice riding instructor named Linda, who owns and runs this place.

My Miata was an interesting addition to the collection of trucks, hay conveyors and other assorted contraptions that cluttered the barnyard. In fact, my car was a conversation piece for the endless stream of equestrians, potato farmers and neighbors stopping by for a cup of coffee.

The attention my car attracted was fun, yet there were days when I would have preferred to be inconspicuous.

“Hey BLUE!” I heard someone yell as I sat at a red light in downtown Bangor one afternoon. Our police reporter and I were out on assignment. We looked over. There were two guys in a pickup truck hanging out the window. Emphasis on pickup.

“Yeah?” “What kinda car is that?”

When I replied they looked the car over, then us. “Ya wanna trade?”

“I could use a truck,” I said, shrugging. The sting of my jammed trunk had not completely worn off. The light changed and I moved to shift into gear.

As I drove off we could hear him yell, “You want to go for a motorcycle ride?”

A friend from New York came to visit towards the end of my stay here. She craved a few days away from the city and the humidity, and she wanted to make the most of her temporary liberation while her two teenage sons were at camp. She told them she was going up to Maine to drive around with the top down on her friend’s Miata–summer camp for adults.

The weather cooperated, delivering four days of perfect cruising conditions. I charted a route up and down the coast of Maine, and armed with my newly honed navigational skills and a Maine road atlas, we set off. My friend, Flip, spent a lot of her time, eyes closed, smiling, enjoying the sea air as we zoomed along.

“LOOK!”, I would yell, whenever I noticed a particularly beautiful view. She would open her big green eyes, peer out at the ocean, and then with the serenity of a Trappist monk, she would smile and gently let her lids slip shut again.

During our four-day road trip we passed a few Miatas here and there. “Why do you wave at some Miatas and not others?” she said, momentarily rallying from her zen coma.

“Well, you’re supposed to wave,” I explained. “It’s like a secret fraternity or something. But sometimes I can tell that the driver isn’t going to wave back, so I don’t wave.”

Flip was silent, eyebrows raised. “You always wave at other blue Miatas,” she pointed out, trying to identify a pattern. “Well yeah, because there’s a special bond there.”

At this, she couldn’t help herself, sighing, eyes rolling dramatically.

She may have outwardly mocked my Miata fever, but by the end of the trip I could tell Flip was secretly coveting my car. We stopped at one of those scenic overlooks and sat watching the water. “It’s perfect,” she murmured, eyes fixed on the waves pounding the shore. “Perfect.”

One of our final stops was an L.L. Bean outlet. When we returned to the parking lot with our loot we tried to jam cotton blankets and flannel shirts into the trunk. I remembered the pillow incident and warned Flip against over-stuffing. If we couldn’t fit everything in the trunk we were going to have to put the top up and use the back shelf for storage, I remarked.

“No,” she said firmly, shoving packages around fiercely, “whatever happens, the top stays down.”

Whatever happened, I couldn’t go back to the dealer with a stuck trunk again. Where’s a guy with a pickup truck when you need him, I thought.

Rides of Joy

By Barbara Feinman

“I kind of feel sorry for you,” my neighbor said to me. Her husband was underneath my house, trying to turn off the water. We were huddled in the kitchen by the stove, trying to pretend the house wasn’t freezing. It was the middle of winter and another pipe had frozen and burst. We could hear rushing water below the floorboards.

“I mean, here you decide to move out to the country and we have the coldest winter in … well, EVER” She tried to hold back a giggle, but it was too late. I started to hum my favorite Billie Holiday song, “Everything Happens to Me.

It had seemed like a good idea back in October. Give up my apartment in Washington and move out to the country for six months or so. My siblings and I own an old captain’s house on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, along a river that feeds into the Chesapeake Bay. I’d go live in the house (nearly 200 years old) and write. That’s what writers do, I told myself; they move out to the country, and they think, and they watch the birds, and they hoe beans, and they write. You know, Walden and Henry David Thoreau and all that. I would do the zen thing. No more honking cars, only honking geese. No more sirens in the night. It sounded idyllic.

That was before the ice storms, the snow-storms, the frozen pipes, the burst pipes, the electricity (and heat) cutting off overnight, the tree blowing down, more snowstorms, the wild bird coming down the chimney and flying madly around (and then dying under my bed) … And to top it all off, my Miata wasn’t in its element, to say the least. It was the first garaged winter of its pampered four-year existence. My driveway’s slight incline made any amount of snowfall a considerable obstacle. Part of my daily January routine became trying to dig my car out, wheels spinning, snow spraying. The neighborhood kids, liberate from school by the weather, would look up when they heard me cursing. The hill in front of my house, which overlooks Blackbird Marsh, was the perfect toboggan run.

“Come on,” one of them would invariably say, abandoning his Flexible Flyer. “Let’s go push her out again.” The good news was that while my little car with its rear wheel drive didn’t fare so well in the snow, it was light enough for four medium-sized kids to rescue with relative ease. Each day I would skid around town, coming home with groceries, the news-paper and a bag of cookies for the sledders. I would invent errands — my cabin fever increasing exponentially.

At first I told concerned friends from the city who called that I “felt like a pioneer, that it was a real adventure.” But as the days turned to weeks and fresh snow kept falling, I grew less enthralled. About that time, I began to covet every four wheel drive vehicle that drove past my house. But I couldn’t afford two cars, and I could never do the unthinkable…

‘Spring is only thirty-nine days away,’ I would tell myself; looking out at the frozen marsh. But somewhere deep within my soul I feared that Spring just wouldn’t happen, that some-how it would just bypass us this year altogether. My little blue car sat patiently in the driveway, covered with ice and snow, and I would shiver with empathy, obsessively imagining it with its top down. I would picture putting the top down, zipping around the back roads. It seemed three million light years away.

Three months later. There I sat in front of my computer, putting the finishing touches on a project which had completely consumed me for the last month. As I stood up from the desk I realized it was a Friday night and I had nothing to do. I felt like celebrating, but all my friends were seventy miles away. I didn’t want to drink alone. But I had to do something more exciting than laundry to mark the end of this thing. I looked out the window absently. Of course! I’d go for a drive, put the top down and head for the hills — exactly what I had fantasized about all winter.

Dusk was approaching. It was the kind of perfect day where the breeze is light, the sun feels sweet against your skin.

I made my way over the wooden bridge and on toward Spaniard’s Neck, a long, windy, lush two-lane road where you rarely encountered another car, much less a police cruiser with radar. My joy rides usually take the same route: Spaniard’s Neck to Conquest Farm. Conquest Farm is a private estate, with a long imposing driveway and vast rolling fields. To one side there stands a huge sort of barn-warehouse, filled with pigeons. I’ve never figured out what the pigeons are for. Sometimes I imagine they are carrier pigeons, trained in delivering mes-sages to star-crossed lovers. Probably not.

Across the road is a locked gate leading to Conquest Beach, which I’ve never had the nerve to climb over and explore. The view from the road is awesome enough – a beautiful, majestic vista of the river.

As I came around the bend and could see the farm in the distance, I noticed something ahead of me. I slowed down and realized it was two deer, sprinting across the road. I got closer and then cut off the engine. The deer looked at me and I looked back, realizing they were part of a large herd. I started to count: one, two, three, four, five … oh no, I thought, there are thirteen! I am horribly, excessively superstitious. Thirteen deer was a bad omen I started to recount. And then, from behind the trees, came ten more deer. Twenty-three, my lucky number! The day on which I was born. I sat. there in silence, watching the deer graze, feeling like I was on safari. They seemed unfazed by me, or the Miata, and they roamed around the field languidly. The breeze rolled in across the dashboard, there were crows cawing in the distance. The sun was beginning to set across the river.

I thought of Thoreau. His two years and two months at Walden Pond were filled with moments like these. Okay, so he didn’t drive around in a Miata, or approve of material things at all, but I’d like to think that if Thoreau had been there with me he wouldn’t have eschewed a spin in my little car. It had transcended its material worth for a moment; somehow it had led me there — reaping a chance meeting with twenty-three deer on a perfect spring evening.

Accelerate!

By Barbara Feinman

Men say women drivers are road turtles. Ha.

In our culture, women — bikini-clad and draped over a shiny hood — are perceived to be good at selling cars, not at driving them. According to men, the self-styled mandarins of the macadam, we women don’t have the right stuff; testosterone, they insist, is necessary for merging or passing with finesse on the highway, not to mention parallel parking.

The notion that women are bad drivers is as archaic as arranged marriages; ability to drive has nothing to do with whether you have an M or F on your license. Many of us are terrific drivers, or could be, if we would just loosen up and let our instincts for the road take over, if we would stop turning the wheel over to our fathers, boyfriends and husbands. Reader, you are not the ungainly driving turtle that men would like you to think you are. There’s a cheetah inside of you, perfectly poised, coordinated and fast.

I love to drive. Admittedly, I’m a special case; not all women grew up playing with cars as well as Barbies, tagging along with a big brother to a slot-car racing track on countless summer afternoons. David would help me at the remote control, watching carefully as I guided miniature cars around the curves, encouraging me to go faster, to take more risks. When I grew up I left the Barbies behind. But not the cars. Never the cars.

If you met me in, say, the super-market, you’d never suspect my fearlessness on the road. I’m only five foot one; I need help opening a jar of peanut butter. I am craven when it comes to rodents, snakes and flying (it’s not the altitude, it’s that someone else is steering), and if the truth be known, I slept with the light on for a week after seeing Jurassic Park.

But what I don’t have in physical strength or courage, I make up for with a lifelong passion for speed and an innate feel for the road that I’m sure many women share, I learned to drive a stick shift my fresh-man year in college when I purchased a used car. After a week or two I no longer needed to rely on my tachometer to determine when to shift; I could interpret the sighs and rumblings of my engine as easily as a new mother can distinguish her baby’s wet cry from its hungry one. Soon I was weaving in and out of traffic on the Santa Monica Freeway life a native Californian. Guys who rode with me would invariably exclaim, “You can really drive!” The unspoken end of the sentence —”for a girl”— was all the prodding I needed to throw the car into fourth and show them what I was made of, that I could outdrive any man, all the while silently praying to the Goddess of Vehicular Karma to protect me from LAPD radar.

If you love to drive, you know the incredible sense of freedom that comes while cruising along a windy road with the top down on a breezy moonlit night, foot on the throttle, double-clutching into the turns. There is nothing better. You are the car, and the car is you. It is then, with the wind wildly tossing your hair, that you finally feel liberated, that you are relaxed enough to entertain secret thoughts of getting your brilliant novel published or of being stuck in an elevator with Sam Shepard. It is then that you are uninhibited enough to sing along with the radio and convince yourself that you are harmonizing not only with Bonnie Raitt but with all of humanity.

My memories of driving pleasure are far too numerous to describe, but my supreme moment (so far) happened about five years ago. After dinner at a restaurant, my friend Terri and I were getting into my car when we heard heavy footsteps running toward us. A man rushed past, followed by a cop on foot. “He went that way,” I yelled, pointing ahead of us. The cop opened the passenger door of my Honda Civic, yelled at Terri to get in the back and jumped in.

“Step on it!” he ordered. I kid you not; those were his very words. I needed no further instruction. hook off, foot to the floor, heart racing as my dream came true — permission to floor it with no threat of recrimination. When we got to the edge of the park the cop yelled “Stop!” and jumped out, to chase the man down a ravine. As we watched them slip away into the darkness, I felt like a guest heroine on Cagney and Lacey.

Why should the excitement of driving well be left to the male of the species? Two women have already made it to the Indy 500, the nation’s premier auto race. The most recent, Lyn St. James, placed a respectable eleventh in her 1992 Indy debut and was the only rookie to cross the finish line. I’m not suggesting you enroll in the legendary Skip Barber Racing School (although I am planning on attending it one day). I’m suggesting that the next time you get behind the wheel of a car, you embrace the opportunity to excel, and accelerate; your car couldn’t care less whether you’re a man or a woman. No one else on the road should, either. Particularly you.