Miata Mileage

114,000 Grains Of Rice

Tonight’s meeting of the MMC was hopefully the last at Little Mexico for a long time. When the President picked this place he had good intentions as it fit the requirements we were looking for in a “permanent” home for our meeting, i.e. central location and visibility of the parking lot from a high traffic street. Trouble was the food is Grade B Mexican, but it was only envisioned as a meeting place with sharing of a couple of hors d’oeuvres over business chat and unfortunately (or fortunately depending which side of the plan you were on) the drive to a restaurant for dinner after the meeting thing never caught on.

Donna had a chicken quesadilla and I had a carnitas dinner in which the pork was fattier and somehow drier than what we normally get at our local Mexican place. Along with the meat and tortillas it came with pico de gallo, refried beans and about 114,000 grains of “spanish” rice. Which is coincidentally, the mileage achievement the Emperor passed on the way there.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 879

113,000 Million Gallons Of Water

Another weekend, another lake in another state park, this time it’s Lake Murray at Dreher Island State Park. We were in this neck of the woods doing the final bonus cache in the SC DeLorme Challenge. When we left the state park we were 9 finds for the day and I told Donna we needed 1 more for 10 and that would give us a total of 525. We stopped outside of Saluda and grabbed #10. When I got home and logged all our finds, i turned out I miss counted, we now have a total of 526. Ooops.

I’m not sure exactly how many gallons of water are in Lake Murray, I bet it is a lot, but I do know that the Emperor passed the 113,000 mile mark on our way out of town this morning.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 864

112,000 Rain Drops

Diet 7-UP was on sale at Walgreen’s starting this morning so we hightailed it over there to pick some up. The price of four 12 packs for $11 with a bonus of a $2 coupon for use on your next visit was about as good as it gets. We managed to make it to the store with the top down, but had to put it up to go inside, which we expected because for the first time in about a month we are going to get some rain. There were only three on the shelf, which we expected and why we hustled over there early on a Sunday, but the the guy running the place offered to check in the back, he came out with one, which we didn’t expect. On the way home the Emperor passed the 112,000 mile point, which I expected, because we went the long way home just for that reason.

We started yesterday morning with a 4 mile foray into Hitchcock Woods. They were having a “Festival of the Woods” with lots of programs, events and demonstrations. We would have liked to have seen the raptor demonstration, but knew we wouldn’t stay long enough for it because it didn’t start ’til after noon. So we just opted to hike in from one end and end up at the Show Ring where all the action was, just to see what we could see. As we got close to the ring we came across a few folks horseback riding. I thought maybe I’d snap a photo or two of them, but my camera wouldn’t come on. My first guess as to why was that the battery was dead. That guess was confirmed wrong when I opened the battery door, the battery wasn’t there. It was home still plugged into the charger. Oops.

We ended up yesterday with a 2.9 mile walk around Phinizy Swamp in Augusta with the MMC. The staff of the Swamp offer a full moon walk a few times a year, but we had the place to ourselves because we are special and one of the docents is a club member. Even though it was not the actual night of the full moon and we were stuck with just a waning gibbous with 95% of the visible disk illuminated we all had a great time. Because it was still pretty dark we thought we saw silhouettes of several types of egrets, maybe an owl and possibly an alligator. We did see a small possum as we had to use a flashlights beam to shoo him away from the boardwalk we were both were on.

Because we were a few minutes early for the Club meet up, Donna and I roamed the deteriorating parking lot of the deserted Regency Mall and grabbed 3 geocaches.

Started down, went up, went down, back up, back down, up again, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 843

111,000 Ways To Be Disappointed

We did our grocery shopping this evening and on the way to Kroger the Emperor passed the 111,000 mile mark. By the time we got home and I checked on the Red Sox they were losing nine to nothing after three innings. Didn’t bother to waste my time listening to the game, so I went into the living room and Donna and I watched the eighth and last episode of Series 1 of Life on Mars.

After that, hoping for some sort of miracle comeback I checked in on the FRS and was excited to see that they had scored two whole runs, unfortunately the Blue Jays had scored 7 more runs making the final score 16-2.

Oh, and Dustin Pedroia’s return to the starting line up lasted all of three games, he went back on the disabled list today. I don’t know what they will have say over at Baseball Prospectus tomorrow, but I’m marking down the Sox’s chances at the playoffs at about 10%. (This morning they stood at 20%)

Go Rays!

Started up, went down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 798

110,000 Words

Here are six of the nine MMC cars that made the trip to Edgefield for breakfast today. I looks like the life-size statue of Strom Thurmond is orating around 110,000 words, perhaps recreating his famous filibuster, longest ever by a single senator at 24 hours and 18 minutes in length nonstop, in opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1957.

As we arrived at the start point for the trip this morning the Emperor past the 110,000 milestone.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 739

109,000 Conversations

Thursday morning on the way to work the Emperor blinked past the 109,000 mile mark.

Thursday night I was surrounded by 109,000 conversations from a couple thousand people. There is that old joke about going to a fight and a hockey game breaking out, well a half dozen of us from the MMC went to a beer bash and a baseball game broke out. It was Thirsty Thursday and small beers were just a buck and a huge chunk of the crowd took advantage of the offer. Donna and I bailed after seven innings to ensure we beat the inebriated to the roads.

Today we threw about 109,000 pieces of candy to folks along a parade loop in Trenton for the 40th Annual Ridge Peach Festival.

Started down, went up, back down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 689

108 Thousand Button Pushes

One hundred and eight was sort of an adjunct to TDTVS’s famous numbers (4 8 15 16 23 42) because that is what they added up to and that is how many minutes you had between entering them into a computer terminal before bad things happened. 108,000 is probably how many times the number and execute buttons were pushed by Desmond during his little over three years down in the Swan Station hatch when he was doing the entering.

I wonder what I should do with my eight LOST links in the left sidebar now that the show is over, delete them? Yeah, probably. So what would be a proper mourning period before moving them? Simple, 108 days. Guess I’ll add a countdown for it…

One hundred and eight thousand is the number of miles the Emperor had traveled when we got almost to work this morning.

Started down, went up, back down, up again, down once more, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 643