Miata Mileage

53,0000 Nuetrons

Who knew that the Godfather of Soul was into Geocaching? Not me, but according to his “widow” Tomi Rae Hynie*, he buried large amounts of cash in the backyard of his Beech Island, SC home. If you feel like you want to take a chance that you’ll get by the gates, the security and quite possibly the guard dogs here are coordinates of the stash/cache. +33? 25′ 30.90″, -81? 49′ 58.08″ (If you enter those coordinates into Google Earth you can get a nice view of the next Graceland.)

We are in Hilton Head for the next couple of days for some off-season beach fun. On the way down tonight, the Emperor passed through the 53,000 mile mark some where on Road #1 on the US Government’s Top Secret Bomb Plant less than 20 miles from James Brown’s house.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 27

* I could have sworn I heard this a couple times on CNN Headline News last night, but searching for any reference of this “story” on the CNN web site today returned no hits.

52,000 Calories

That it just about as many calories as I have consumed in the last two days at work. If I don’t see another cookie, brownie or piece of fudge for the next two months I wouldn’t be disappointed.

The Emperor glided past that same number mileage milestone on the way to a friends home this evening. We had some nice healthful vegetable soup followed by dessert of chocolate cookie bars, peanut butter cookies with chocolate frosting, pecan-date pinwheels….

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 516

51,000 Flu Germs

UsAte the end of yesterday’s drive we were one mile short of 1515 for the trip and the Emperor was just two miles shy of the 51k mark. We took care of the short coming on the way to the store for our weekly grocery shopping. Seems like we must be driving the heck out of this car recently as the mileage milestones are coming fast and furious. 51,000 – 11/26 • 50,000 – 11/21 • 49,000 – 11/08 • 48,000 – 10/28 Last November 14th we were just at 31,000…

Donna’s cough was a little better today and her voice didn’t crack but once. She still needs to talk to the doctor tomorrow because she should be getting over this by now. Of course the reason she might be feeling better is she has passed along some of those flu germs to me. Started feeling a little off last night and continued on to today. No cough or fever, but body aches, headache and a general out of sorts feeling. We have stayed pretty much indoors all day and both of us have caught naps on the couch twice. We are going to try and get to bed a little early too.

The photo was taken by Donna’s brother Steve as we got ready to leave for home on Friday afternoon.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 483

50,000 Pieces of Wood

Johnny LawSomewhere just north of St Augustine the Emperor glided past the 50k mark. I guess I was wrong the other day when I said there would be miles left to travel on the warranty when we ran out of time. Just the opposite, the 3 year/50k warranty has expired with three days left.

We drove out of Georgia on I-95, but 36 miles was all we could take. Just after stopping and getting some free OJ at the welcome center, we got off the ugly Interstate and picked up A1A. We then drove the whole way down to New Smyrna Beach following the coastal road. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes tacky, sometimes crowded and sometimes nearly empty, taking the slow road, if you have the time, is the way to go. It helped that it is off-season which kept the crowds way down. The big trouble for us was that the weather was way off-season. Average high this time of year along the middle Florida coast is is 75, but today is wasn’t even 55. Combined with the 10-20 MPH mean that the top was up all day and any ventures out to look at the beach and waves was very brief.

Even though I was running right at the speed limit, Johnny Law shadowed me for a couple miles when we drove through Daytona Beach.

Before dinner tonight we took a walk around a mile and a half circular boardwalk that is at the north end of New Smyrna Beach’s coast. It was a quick walk over about 50,000 pieces of treated wood. The sun had finally popped out from under the clouds, but it was too late to raise the temperature any as it traversed the last 10 degrees of it’s arc before disappearing beneath the horizon.

Food for today consisted of the “deluxe” continental breakfast at the Village Inn, bah. Lunch at another Barbara Jean’s (which turns out to be a mini chain of about 6 restaurants), very good, but finished off any possible crab cake cravings for a month or so. Dinner was at Vincente’s in New Smyrna Beach, a small Italian place whose baked ziti was just the right amount to split and very satisfying.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 471

Over 49,000 Dead Leaves

Blue Z CarIs how many litter our front yard after the last few days of wind and rain.

It is also the amount of miles on the car. We must have hit the 49k mark late last night because after I made the 6 mile trip to work this morning the odometer read 49008. The Miata when new came with a 50,000 mile/3 year warranty and it looks like we are going to be a little shy of the mileage mark when we pass thru the time limit in 16 days.

In an attempt to wipe out the memory of the lousy “pizza” we ate last Friday on HHI we went to Ferrando’s in the Alley. It worked. Lou and company serve up an excellent pie and as Rachel Ray would say, “Yummo!” Best part is we only eat half of the 14″er in one sitting, so we have the other half for, let’s say, Saturday lunch. It’s all I can do from raiding the fridge right now.

Started up, went down, back up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 452

48,000 Leaves

OverlookThat is the average leaf count on a mature maple tree* and coincidentally, the mileage the Emperor passed on the way to to meet the participants of the MMC Leaf Peeping Expedition. Over 400 miles and 11 hours later we are home and just a little tuckered out.

We had pretty much the average turn out for our club on an event recently, 3 cars. I threatened to cancel if at least 4 cars didn’t show up, but that was an empty boast as my navigator told me that even if we were the only car we we going on the run. The six of us devoured enough breakfast at the Cracker Barrel to sustain us for a week in the Amazon before setting out in search of chlorophyll challenged leaves. The first 11 miles were Interstate, but after we got to two-lane blacktop 2/3 of the tops folded down. The sun was just beginning to peek over the tree tops and the temps were in the low 60’s so the windows and wind blockers were still up.

After our first pit stop and because one couple had yet to experience them, we made a stop at the Georgia Guidestones, AKA the American Stonehenge. The journey then continued up the eastern edge of Georgia. A quick dip into SC before ending up at Black Mountain State Park back in north Georgia. Two years ago when we did this trip with the Club we were about two weeks late and the vistas were of a uniform brown. This time we hit at just about peak and the mountains were very colorful.

Lunch was at the renown Dillard House just up the road from the state park. The six of us devoured enough food at lunch to sustain us on a circumnavigation of the globe. After eating we took a winding road to Highlands, NC where we lost one car to shopping in the downtown. Donna and I, along with, the appropriately named Autumn and Dave, gassed up and headed down the mountain and back into SC.

Highway 28 from Highlands back to the flatlands is a great Miata road full of twists and turns and all manner of decreasing radius bends. I won’t mention any names, but one of this crew really regretted the amount of food they consumed at lunch. About halfway through the good stuff we came up on a Mazda Tribute (the mini-SUV) who obliviously didn’t get zoom-zoom memo. He was going around the turns so slow we could have passed him on a skateboard. With no place to really pass and with two cars to boot we played whip with him for about 20 miles, alternately slowing way down letting him get a “big” head start and then charging back at a more appropriate Miata speed.

Awesome trip, but a long day, so I’m glad we only do it once a year.

* Oh yeah, I made that leaf count statistic up so it would fit the car’s mileage.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 436

47,000 Piles Of Horse Poo

At least that is what it seemed like on our morning walk in Hitchcook Woods this morning after last week’s walk along a human only trail out west. Because we got a late start (after 10:00 AM) we had to share the woods with a half-dozen people walking dogs and a third of a dozen horseback riders. I took a couple pictures that I need to look at for the October addition to the Hitchcock Woods 2006 gallery.

We went out shopping at the mall this afternoon. Donna needs new shoe laces for her hiking boots and I wanted to get a Detroit Tigers ball cap to wear to work tomorrow just to rib my Yankee loving manager. We didn’t buy either. We forgot to measure how long Donna’s laces were, so we didn’t take a chance on getting some too short or too long. The only Detroit hats we could find were of the fitted variety and they were $30. That was too much for a hat that I’d probably only wear once, fifteen would have been just about right.

We went to a local church’s Chocolate Festival yesterday. Donna likes to bid on some of the stuff at their silent auction and I like to pick some of their used books. She didn’t win anything and I got 4 books and she one, for 5 books it cost a whopping $3. I picked up one book, In Her Shoes, because the title sounded familiar. Oh, yeah, its a movie with Cameron Diaz or somebody (its in the Netflix queue right now.) I opened the book at random and started reading, hey, this is pretty funny stuff, so I bought it. I also bought a second book by the same author Jennifer Weiner.

The Emperor snicked past 47,000 miles this morning on the way to our walk in the woods.

Started down, went up, back down, up, down, up again, down again, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 416