Miata Moves

It Must Be the Accent

Lately I have really been sucked down the rabbit hole of car videos on YouTube. I find that I have gravitated towards shows that originate in the UK. Honestly, it nothing to do with Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee, it is just that everything sounds so much more refined in the Queen’s English. I’ve already discussed that James Engelsman increased the enjoyment of Throttle House vids, but now I’ve stumbled on a few more YouTube channels that I find positively mesmerizing.

Firstly there is Harry’s Garage, whose presenter is named, go figure, Harry Metcalfe. Mr. Metcalfe founded EVO magazine back in 1998 and after 15 years retired to become a gentleman farmer with a decidedly awesome car collection. Although he is technically not an auto journalist anymore, because of his car guy stature he also gets all the new cool cars to review. He also films his adventures restoring or repairing some of the older exotics in his collection and random Silverstone Auction previews. With him being an old guy like me I especially like his road trips in some of his cool cars because he breaks out actual paper maps to explain the routes he is going to take:

Next up is the Autotrader UK channel where Rory Reid, ex of Top Gear, puts cars through their paces, like his latest on the new Lotus Emira:

While I’ll probably never own an electric vehicle I still like to keep up with what is happening in that market, but if you are into electric vehicles the Electric Vehicle Man is worth checking out. Here is their latest on the Genesis GV60 the sister car to the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and the Kia EV6:

11.3 miles to Home Depot and back.
Times Miata Driven since 01/01/22: 32

 

Gyros

Today the Miata made a 5.7 mile dinner run to the only “Greek” restaurant in town, that’s right Arby’s, for gyros.

We needed to cleanse our palates after last week’s attempt to make our own at home following a recipe Donna found online. It turned out very, very disappointedly. It used a mix of beef and lamb like a gyro should, but it was using ground meat of both in an oblong patty fried in a pan, unlike the traditional vertical rotisserie method. The meat turned out tough. 🙁 The pita wasn’t that great either, we couldn’t find them anywhere in Fred Meyers, so we bought what we thought were the best ones on the shelf at Walmart. The pitas fell apart after warming them up. Our tzatziki sauce was from a premade tzatziki yogurt dip we found and even after adding feta cheese pieces to it, was not really that great.

Having had good luck with Arby’s gyros before and after our home disaster we figured that these tonight would just blow us away, but for some reason they just didn’t hit the mark. I think we’ll give them another chance, but two strikes and they’ll be out.

We have tried a gyro at a place over the Cascades in Medford and it was a bit different, but not worth going back there for one. On a trip in Washington state we found a chain called Pita Palace or something like that and had a similar experience, meh.

When we lived in Aiken we were regulars at a family run restaurant called Acropolis that did a real nice gyro. There was a nice little Greek place in the French Quarter that we ate gyros at semi often when we lived there after discovering this wonderful food at the 1984 Louisiana World Exposition.

Ed Note: Donna swears it was at the 1982 Knoxville World’s Fair!

15.3 miles from 2 sperate trips yesterday & today.
Times Miata Driven since 01/01/22: 31

 

Miata Moves

Yesterday’s lunch was a medium Boss from Rodeos Pizza and because it was a beautiful afternoon the Miata was pressed into aa pizza delivery vehicle.

This morning we took the Mini to Fred Meyer for grocery shopping and while Donna was was restocking the selves with food, I was sent to High Lakes Dispensary to restock our cannabis shelf.

When I got back home, while the Miata was still all warmed up, we both made the trip to Walmart for some food items we couldn’t earlier. Then from there we looped east over to Home Depot for some more painting supplies.

28.2 miles from 3 sperate trips yesterday & today.
Times Miata Driven since 01/01/22: 29

 

Choosy Brians Choose Jif Peter Pan

I was aware of the Jif peanut butter recall for possible salmonella contamination, but didn’t really pay attention to it. We’ve had a jar of Jif in the cupboard, but it was half used up and neither of us has gotten sick. If it was bad, we surely would have had a problem by now.

When the local paper published the the product codes yesterday Donna asked if ours was in range listed. I shrugged (once again we have had no issues.) So she went and looked at the jar. Sure enough ours was smack dab in the middle of the recalled numbers. So, better safe than sorry, into the trash it went. On today’s grocery shopping trip we picked up a jar of Peter Pan.

The Miata has been driven 3 times since the last update. It was driven a whole 4.9 miles to go fill up the tank with premium unleaded on Monday. This was the 130th fill-up for me with this car and it took 9.347 gallons at $4.49 per1 returning a 26.08 MPG. For reference the very first time I filled up the CTBNL was on September 2nd 2016 and at that time it received 9.856 gallons at $1.699 per2 for a MPG of 25.9.

The Miata was driven to my doctor’s appointment this morning for a round trip of three whole miles. The only real drive of consequence it took was a 25.7 mile evening cruise yesterday. Because it was dusk and the temps were in the upper 70’s the bugs were out in full force we managed to collect quite a few on the nose and windshield, so this afternoon it got a bath in the driveway.

33.6 miles on 3 trips.
Times Miata Driven since 01/01/22: 28

 

As Threatened

I did change the oil in the Miata today. When I pulled out the dipstick, before I started it up to back it out into the driveway, the oil level read full and it looked pretty clean, but I went ahead and drained it anyway to make room for the new.

That drained oil was put in the car last June at 79,300-ish miles on the odometer. The time before that, I did it the driveway here in June of 2020 with 77,500-ish miles on the odometer. The time before that was in Aiken when the 75,000 mile service was done in July of 2019.

Because it looks like the CTBNL is going to be on a yearly oil change schedule, this time I bought a synthetic blend instead of the usual straight dino oil. I’m going to start with the blend before I put full synthetic in it as a test. Because the last time I tried full synthetic in the previous Miata it started to leave spots on the garage floor. This is because synthetic is thinner and will find places to sneak out easier than the old school oil. Admittedly the previous car had a lot more miles on it than the almost 81k this car has.

1.8 miles of around the block.
Times Miata Driven since 01/01/22: 23

 

Impeding Oil Change

The Miata is way due for an oil change. As a matter of fact we are about 2 weeks shy of a year since the oil has been drained out of it. Back then it was done not in my driveway into a collection pan, but along Hwy 140 south of town, in the parking area of a fuel refilling station and on the flat bed of a tow truck.

That length of time shouldn’t be too much of an issue as the car has probably been a total of 1,500 miles since then. And I have tried to go for a drive once a week bringing the car up to operating temperature for a good 15-20 minutes.

Right now I’m shooting for this Saturday or Sunday because the weather is going to be at least in the upper sixties and sunny. The last few days it has been cold and snowy. Not too cold for the snow to accumulate any, it just melted on contact with the ground, but not the kind of weather to lay under a car and change the oil.

11.5 miles of around town running.
Times Miata Driven since 01/01/22: 22

 

That’s Kind of Backwards: Addendum

The optical drive I had came from an HP desktop and just looking at it it seemed like it would slide right into the spot in the Dell’s case. But I never really tried it, I just assumed. So naturally it didn’t fit. Like I mentioned previously, I can’t remember the last time I used an optical drive, so the only thing I lost was a bit of time and $3.99. Both of which are not a problem.

So right now I have a few different options: 1) Buy an official Dell external drive for $40, 2) buy an external case for the HP drive for around half that or 3) buy a random complete drive off Amazon for around the same price as that chancy case. Right now I’m going to take option four, i.e. don’t anything until I actually need an optical and worry about it then.

The Miata was used the last three days for short around town trips. On Tuesday it was sort of spring-like so I took it, top down, on the 2 mile ice cream run to soothe Donna’s sore mouth after a root canal. On Wednesday I took it to my 6-month follow up with the GP, because it was an early morning appointment the trip there was with the top up, but the way home it was down. Today was a rainy midday appointment with my dentist to get my new crowns, so top up the whole way. All three trips are reflected below.

11.6 miles.
Times Miata Driven since 01/01/22: 21