Miata Mileage

51,000 Miata T-shirts

I’ve got a Blipshift problem. Like a junkie looking for another fix I check their site nearly every morning hoping that I’ll like their design, I need just one more car related T. They’ve done about a dozen Miata related shirts and I have 6 or 7 of them. I’ve also got at least 3 other random design shirts too. I’ve submitted a Miata design idea, which they used. I also submitted a photo using the hashtag #blipshifted that they used on the site.

For the design idea, I got a free copy of that particular shirt & and a big gift certificate of Blip Bucks (or what ever they call ’em.) For submitting the photo of socks-in-a-jar I got an additional smaller gift certificate. So when the design(s) in the thumbnail showed up on Wednesday I knew I had to get one. I still had money left over on the gift certificate from my Pop Up Blocker suggestion and it was burning a hole in my pocket, so I splurged and got a hoodie and a shirt (and a sticker.)

For the hoodie I bought the silver NC because that is what color my current car is. Besides no one but probably a Miata purist will know which generation it is anyway (and even in the MMC there are probably only 3 or 4 who would know.) Then I bought the red ND on the t-shirt. The green NB was too dark on the dark gray shirt, if they ever resto-mod the shirts I’d get the NB version if it was lighter in color or green on a lighter colored shirt.

On the way over to North Augusta for dinner out with friends the CTBNL past through its 51,000th mile.

50,000 Data Points?

As you can see from the chart, winter has set in and the Miata gets driven a lot less. For the first 2-1/2 months we were racking up miles at an average rate of a little over 37 per day. It seems like just yesterday we bought the CTBNL with a mere 46,320 miles on it, but it has been nearly 5 months and we are averaging about 24-1/2 miles a day for the total ownership.

On the actual yesterday, the CTBNL passed the 50k mark on the way into work at the Valve Store.

Parked On 49,000 Pieces of Pine Straw

reunited
Alternate Post Title: Reunited

The previous owner of the CTBNL passes right by the Valve Store on most days when he goes into Aiken proper and if he times his look over just so, he can see his old Miata siting there in the back corner of the parking lot. Well, sometime in the recent days he just couldn’t help himself anymore, he pulled in and parked next to me to snap the above photo of his 1973 Orange 914 and its former stablemate.

On the way home from the Valve Store today the CTBNL passed the 49,000 mile mark. In the last two months I have put almost as many miles on the car as David did in the year and a half or so of ownership. Then again I don’t have a fleet of Porsche 914s and a Porsche Boxster (not to mention a Jeep Wrangler and maybe more) to choose from when I leave the house.

Is it just me or should I find some light blue fabric paint and put a couple of stripes on the cockpit cover to match the car?

47,000 Shades of Silver

They say on the internet that silver is the fastest color, that is debatable, and it is, ad nauseum. They also say that when painting, silver is the hardest color to match. I can now speak from experience and I’m in full agreement to that statement.

When we bought the CTBNL it had a few ding and dangs, including a couple of big black parallel marks on the rear bumper along with some other random scrapes. Donna did not like them at all so she asked if I would try and paint over them.

I had some silver paint that I had used to fix the yellowing center caps of the OEM wheels that were on the Emperor for awhile. I took a clear plastic juice bottle and sprayed several coats of silver on it and compared it to the stock color. Hmmm, not bad. So I masked off os square of the bumper and gave it a go. Three coats of silver and 3 coats of clear coat and the results weren’t too bad, just a bit darker.

I thought not bad, but maybe if I ordered a custom can of touch-up paint from automotivetouchup.com I could get it even closer. Twenty five dollars and a week later I was ready to go again. Masked off a slightly larger square and sprayed the bumper area with 4 light coats of the new silver paint. Let it dry about 5 hours in the afternoon sun and then applied three coats of clear. After dinner I went out to pull off the masking tape and the colored square had a markedly green cast to it.

I’m now thinking that maybe I should have burned every one of my Atta Boy points on this one and told Donna to leave well enough alone. I’m fairly sure I could have put up with the scratches as they were naturally occurring, so only one of us would have been frowning when looking at the back of the car. Now there are two of us not happy with the rear view of the CTBNL and me worse than her, because this disaster is by my own hand. Don’t ask what the next step will be because neither one of us has the faintest idea…

This afternoon the odometer of the CTBNL marched past the 47,000 mile mark.

165,000 Sunrises

165,000 Sunrises

That many sunrises would actually be somewhere just north of 450 years, so that is not how many I have witnessed, but perhaps in another life if I was Count Magnus Brahe, a Swedish noble, who was born on September 25, 1564.This particular sunrise was experienced by Donna and I on our way to work this morning.

Not too far into the trip to tonight’s MMC monthly meeting the Emperor pass thru the 165,000 mile mark.

Motoring Challenge Points 2, Approx Miles Driven 0
Totals So Far: 60 points & 970 miles

Started up, went down, went up, back down, back up, down again, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 06/25/15: 195

164,000 April Fools Day Pranks

Well, Yesterday was April Fools Day and it used to be kind of fun, but now not so much for a couple of reasons. One is just me, like a lot of things, I’m too old for that stuff anymore. And two every Tom, Dick and Harry business and internet site has got in on it has sort of saturated the prank market.

So now I have become sort of immune to the whole thing, jaded even. Which I why I thought nothing was amiss in an email I received from the folks who are producing the Bernie Sanders Action Figure at FCTRY promoting a Trump Vader Doll for free. Just click on the link. Bait dangled…

April Fool

Free? I’m in. Click. Hook set. I’m taken to a cool page, there is a big red button that says reserve yours today with a little notation that reads ‘193 offers remaining.’ There is a big image of the figure, a list of features, further down the page is a video with a Star Wars like opening crawl, three buttons with Trumpisms in a Vader voice, and at the bottom is another red button to reserve your action figure with a notation that there are ‘192 offers remaining.’ …reeling in. Oh, man, they are going fast I better get in on this. I enter my email address and click on the button. I check my email…and…I’ve been had.

April Fool 2

The page is still there, go check it out – http://trumpvader.us/

The Emperor ran past the 164,000 mile mark somewhere in the northwest section of Aiken,SC.