48,000 Curves on the Blue Ridge Parkway
There are probably 48,000 turns along the 469 mile Blue Ridge Parkway, but we only drove a few of them this morning. The CTBNL passed through the 48,000 mile mark somewhere in the 20 or so miles we did do.
There are probably 48,000 turns along the 469 mile Blue Ridge Parkway, but we only drove a few of them this morning. The CTBNL passed through the 48,000 mile mark somewhere in the 20 or so miles we did do.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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.
Man, I’m down to blogging once a week anymore, not with a bang but a whimper maybe?
Friday the Emperor got a bath because on Saturday the MMC was going on a day trip. Saturday the Emperor passed through the 163,000 mile barrier somewhere on SC-28 between North Augusta and McCormick.
About a month ago an item popped up in my Google Miata newsfeed about a company that is selling kits to transplant a Honda V6 into the first & second generation Miatas. They were just a hundred miles up the road in the small town of Royston, GA.
Mini Tec has been in business for 13 years hot rodding the original 1959-2000 Mini by stuffing Honda VTEC motors in them and now they have branched out in the Miata. A couple of emails and a phone call later and I arranged a tour of the place for the Masters Miata Club. We had seven cars and a dozen people follow Donna and I to the town that used to be just famous for being the boyhood home of Ty Cobb.
BJ and Norm welcomed us with open arms (and snacks), showed us around their shop and regaled us with tales of daring do. They had a couple of converted cars, an NA and an NB, with their hoods popped up showing those Honda V6 engines. The motor almost looks like it belongs there and as it turn out the the conversion actually is lighter than the stock get up and you end up with about twice as much horsepower.
They offered rides in the NA and only one of our group took them up on it. They zipped off up the road the shop was on and were gone for about 5 minutes. You could hear Dennis hooting a hundred yards down the road on the way back. This looks like big fun, but it would change the whole character of the car in my opinion and is not even on my radar, but if you desire big hp & torque numbers or are a hot rodder at heart, this might your ticket.
Back in October we had a crap ton of rain in South Carolina, roads washed out, small dams broke and places were underwater for weeks. All that water, and because of where it fell, didn’t do a thing to the levels of the Savannah River. But the rain of the last ten days or so has swollen the levels of Clarks Hill Lake to the point where the Army Corp of Engineers have had to literally open the flood gates of Thurmond Dam.
On the local news this evening, they reported that right now they were letting out 162,000 gallons every half second1 and that was actually less than what was flowing into the lake from upstream. Predictably all this water coming over the dam is reeking havoc on the Savannah River downstream in Augusta. It is nothing like what is going on in Missouri, but some of the rich folk along the river are losing boat docks and the Riverwalk in downtown is now the Riverswim.
The Emperor flowed through the 162,000 mile mark somewhere on our trip up to the dam to view the spectacle.
Scott Lange with the help of about 161,000 ants saves the world free certain destruction by defeating the evil genius scientist Darren Cross in Marvel’s Antman.
Put the most interesting part of the movie for me was the character played by Michael Douglas, Hank Pym. He was wearing what I think might be my next eyeglass frames, the Advocate in clear from Old Focals.
Not too far east of Modoc, SC the Emperor passed through the 161,000 mile mark.