Miata Mileage

67,000 Kajillion Watts

Gnuclear GnormThe Emperor passed through the 67,000 mile mark not too far from the Oconee Nuclear Station. We stopped in and photographed Gnorm sitting on a concrete block just outside the plant. He really liked the looks of the round water tower that had rings around it so it took on the appearance of an atom. In case you can’t read the words on the yellow tag, it says, Radioactive Material, RWP Required for Entry, Notify RP Prior to Entry, Authorized Entry Only.

We finished up taking pictures of all the fish we could find and ended up missing only two (well, three because we just have a picture of the empty base of one.) All 46 photos can be seen in my Flickr photo set: Fish Out of Water 2.

On the Post Office front, we did 13 this morning and 7 more tonight. May do some more on Sunday morning before heading home (may not either.) So it will take me a while to sort through and post them.

We also brought along my Godson Gnorm and snapped about 10 travel log photos of him that will need to be tweaked and uploaded to Flickr! as well.

Started up, went down, back up, back down, up again, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 413

66,000 Spokes

66,000 SpokesAt least that is how many it seemed like as the peleton streaked by us yesterday afternoon in Greenville. It is also the mileage milestone that the Miata moved past this afternoon somewhere south of Laurens, SC.

We took the “long” way home today by circling north of Duncan before heading south to visit 9 more Post Offices for photographing. That made a total of 33 POs for our three day trip. Going to take a while to get all of those photos edited and online. I know I’m going to have a heck of a time remembering anything unique about every one of them for captioning. Good thing we are not going anywhere next weekend.

Even with all driving, picture taking and bike race watching I still had time to finish one Spenser book and start another. This one won’t make the Spenser’s Crime Buster Rules page, so I’ll post it here:

There was no answer when we rang the bell. The house had that stillness that had Paul had mentioned. In the interests of not looking like a jerk, I tried the doorknob. It was locked.

“I already tried that,” Paul said.

“It’s a Dick Tracy crime stopper,” I said. “Always try the door before jimmying it.”

“Great working with a pro,” Paul said.

Started up, went down, back up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 376

65,000 Cars Backed Up on I-95

Crocketville?We are at 221 South Carolina Post Offices. About half. I say about because when I started this and made up my spreadsheet of all the POs in the state I came up with 460. How accurate that total will turn out to be is not clear. Ther are 9 military bases that I’m not sure I will be allowed to waltz onto to just take a picture. There is a Greenwood Post Office I know exists, but isn’t on the list because it is not listed on USPS.com. How many more are there that I don’t know about? How many are listed and aren’t there anymore?

So far, four are MIA, including the one that is supposed to be at 4708 Sandy Run Road (see attached photo) that we tried to find today. On the USPS web site this is called a Hampton Post Office, with a name of Crocketville. As you can see it doesn’t look much like a Post Office. Probably was one when Crocketville was a real town and not just a marked section on SC63 east of Hampton, but no more.

There are 3 Post Offices listed for Walterboro, two of which are north of town and not too far off I-95, so it was decided to get these two before getting the downtown PO. The best laid plans… We got on I-95 heading north and after a 1/2 mile there were orange signs warning of an accident ahead. Then we got one of those display boards that said there was a detour around the accident at the next exit. Then with three miles to go to the exit, traffic came to a standstill. We crept along with 65,000 other cars to the next exit. Donna suggested we give up on this PO because of the traffic, so we got off the northbound exit, looped right back on the southbound and shelved those Post Offices for another time.

Our other failure this weekend occurred in Beaufort on Lady’s Island. We couldn’t find the address of 10 Sams Point Rd. There was a shopping center with a Publix that might have been it, but there was not any USP signage out front (nor an address either.) There was a shopping center kind of parallel but it was on a different road. We looked there and didn’t find anything either. Now that we are home and see that that road is called Sams Point Parkway it may need another visit. This is not a hardship in any way because this is just a stone’s throw away from the other reason we went south to Beaufort besides Post Offices, Barbara Jean’s crab cakes.

About 10 miles from home the Emperor passed through 65,000 miles.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 337

The $64,000 Question

Alien ConfusionWhat the heck is this?

Another Carolina Car Trek car. This is one of two in the thriving megalopolis of Society Hill, SC.

Somewhere north of Chesterfield, SC the Emperor drove through the 64,000 mile mark. We have eaten out twice today, but I can’t talk about it because I just got through watching Feasting on Asphalt II. They spent two days around New Orleans and what they got to eat made anything I had today look and taste like soggy Ritz crackers.

Spent Today: $49.70
Year to Date: $1713.42
Meals out, 99 of a possible 642.

At Cousin Laurie’s house we meet up with some of the same cast of characters as you can see in this photo, AKA the Midlothian McGraths, who were visiting as well. I found out that I had mislabeled the oldest and middle daughters in the photo. I’m pretty sure I’ve got them correct now.

We snagged 4 Post Offices this morning on the way up to Chesterfield; Hopkins, Gadsden, Eastover and Horatio. The first three have been at the top of our Most Wanted List for a couple months now, but because of where they are located (in the middle of, and on the way to, nowhere) it took a concerted effort to get them photographed. We are planning on an even dozen for on the way home tomorrow because if we get that many our captured total would be a nice round 200.

Started down, went up, back down, up again, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 309

63,000 Train Cars

Choo-ChooWe were back in northeast South Carolina hunting Post Offices. Knocked off 16 more, bring our total captured to 184 out of the total of 460. I was stopped by a freight train twice over the weekend, once on Saturday with Donna’s cousin Susie and her daughter Katlin in a Jaguar XJ8 and on Sunday with Donna in the Miata.

The visit wasn’t all fun and games though, we were there to offer what moral support we could to Donna’s cousin Laurie because her husband Ted was in the hospital. Ted’s lifelong health issues had final caught up with him. Diabetes and a bad heart caused an early retirement. The diabetes led to weakened kidney’s which finally gave up after a his last heart attack necessitating dialysis. When we visited in March they were still struggling with getting the home dialysis to work right and Ted reminded us of how Donna’s mom had gotten towards the end. When we stopped in last week the both of us were shocked at how far he had deteriorated. He fell out of bed on Tuesday and was hospitalized in Florence at the McLeod Medical Center. Ted passed away early this morning.

While traveling west, somewhere east of North, South Carolina the Emperor moved past the 63,000 mile mark.

For dinner we both had a bowl of Won-ton Soup and an Egg Roll, while we split an order of Jade Chicken (don’t know if this is a regular Chinese restaurant dish or just got it’s name because we were eating a place called Jade of China.)

Meal Cost: $13.90
Tip: $2.10
Spent This Meal: $16.00
Year to Date: $1509.70
Meals out, 85 of a possible 585.

 

Started up, went down, back up, down again, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 278

Aiken

Concord, NC to Aiken, SC. We managed to ride with the top down until we got to Chesterfield, SC to visit Donna’s cousin Laurie and her husband Ted. When we left them at around 11:00 it was already over 90º. After passing through a rain shower with the cloud cover still intact we finished the last 30 miles with it down again. It sure is fun visiting places, but it is great to be back home. Some trip notes:

  1. When I got in the car this morning the odometer read 62005 for the 3rd milestone of the trip, didn’t notice it last night when we parked.
  2. Total mileage for the trip: 2,637.4 for an average of 240 miles per day. Even though it didn’t move at all for a day and a half in DC and our hotel in CT was only 6 miles from the house.
  3. I filled up with gas 11 times or about once a day. The highest price paid for gas was $3.40 in Yorktown Heights, NY and the lowest was $2.88 in Clear Brook, VA. Average cost for the whole trip $3.15 (premium fuel.)
  4. Don’t ask about mileage because I don’t track that. I will do some quick math and see if it over 27 MPG. If it is, everything is OK.
  5. Signs on the side of the road in Connecticut warned that the fine for littering is $219. Why the odd figure?
  6. We took money out of a free standing ATM machine in a hotel lobby and the fee for using it was $3.05, not the usual two bucks. I can understand $3, but why the extra nickel?
  7. Public restrooms are scarcer up north compared to around here. So sometimes we had to get creative.
      a. The first floor in hotels will always have restrooms, just walk in like you belong there.
      b. We used the restrooms just inside the entrance of the Newton, NJ hospital when asking around downtown failed to turn up any place to go.
  8. At one hotel restroom break we even grabbed a banana off the breakfast bar, because the place we had stayed at didn’t have them. So if you are bold enough you should be able to walk right in and get a whole breakfast at most places.
  9. I bought a hooded sweatshirt at Furman U in Greenville on the way up. It served me well at altitude on the Blue Ridge Parkway and in the unseasonably cool CT weather, but will now be exiled to the back of the closet until November.
  10. I managed to finish one paperback book on the trip, good thing I was a quarter of the way through when we started.
  11. High-speed internet access was free everywhere we stayed and ranged from very marginal in a middle of the hall room in the Farmington Inn to excellent in a room at the end of the hall at the same place.
      a. Last night’s started good and got crappy later in the evening. Even tried the Cat-5 cable which professed to having a 10Mb connection wouldn’t do crap. Maybe there is a download throttle…

I didn’t take any pictures today, so for your entertainment, I present a shot of the Colonnade at Washington & Lee University in Lexington, VA from yesterday.

Started up, went down, back up, back down, up again, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 263

New Britain 3

By a NoseOr 61,000 Carousel Horses.

Today we all piled into two cars and headed over a couple towns to Bristol and visited the Carousel Museum. I am not as big a fan of carousels as others in the group, but it was a very interesting couple hours, mostly due to our guide. She was only two years out of high school, but her knowledge and interest in the subject as well as a natural way with us, John Q. Public, made the subject almost exciting.

This evening Donna and I went over to catch up with a boyhood chum and his wife who we hadn’t seen in a while. We had a good time catching up on the events of the distant and recent past. Unfortunately a lot of the discussion centered around the foibles of our being upper middle-aged.

The Emperor clicked over to exactly 61,000 miles as I pulled into the hotel parking lot tonight.

Started up, went down, back up, back down, up again, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 249