Miata Photos

Guest Judge Anyone?

Voting is well underway in the 2nd Annual “My Favorite Miata Photo” Contest. If you haven’t voted yet please do, polls close this Sunday at noon eastern time. Because that is open to anyone to vote it is more of a popularity contest and it looks like there are photographers with a lot of friends, of the 382 votes so far they have 200 (53.2%) of them.

I was hoping for a more artistic judging on the photos and wasn’t getting it, so seeing as it is my contest I created a separate prize category for some Judge’s Choice awards. I picked my favorite 8 photos and emailed all eight of the photographers and asked them to rate the entries. They should omit their photo and rank the other seven in order from #1-their favorite to #7-their least favorite. I would award a sliding scale to their rankings with more points awarded for first and less points for each successive lower rank.

So far I have received 5 of 8 replies, if any of you would like to be a guest judge to fill in the three vacancies please do. Go to this gallery to see just the eight finalists and email me your rankings from top to bottom. Because you get to rank all 8 I’ll be tossing out the last one. Ballots will be accepted in the order in which they are received. Of course if all three of the official judges eventually reply yours will get tossed out like so many hanging chads.

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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 396

Andy Jones

Andy JonesWashed the car this morning in preparation for today’s MMC gathering for the Sno-Cap Drive In’s 42nd Anniversary. We had a pretty decent showing of cars, six, but all of us were late arrivals, so we were beat to the shady spots under the awning by the Corvettes and the VWs.

I was a few minutes late because I stopped for an impromptu photo shoot at the empty Andy Jones car dealer lot. Andy Jones opened a Mazda dealership in Aiken a year or so after I bought my first Miata. A couple years later they moved 15 miles west to this shop in North Augusta. Now they have packed up and moved 20 miles further west to Augusta, GA.

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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 348

Mushrooms Sprouting in Reprocessed Hay

SunburstsThis morning we braved the sticky weather to go for a 2 mile walk in the woods, instead of our usual 10 mile Sunday morning bike ride. Afterwards we continued the alternative Sunday by getting a bagel at the Atlanta Bread Company instead of a muffing at the New Moon Cafe. I took a couple photos on our walk, including one that matched this post’s title, but in retrospect, even though she pointed out the image to me, Donna felt I shouldn’t put it here.

So tonight, when we went out to do a little shopping and get some gas, I brought the camera along to find a my suitable picture. This one was taken outside of CVS and after a little digital manipulation…

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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 310

Practicing My Parade Wave

Put the Vampire Teeth back in the mouth and washed the car. Tomorrow is the Ridge Spring Peach Festival and the MMC is in the parade…

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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 207

Muffler Man

Muffler ManAiken, SC to Washington, GA where we lunch on the square at a place called the Jockey Club. Donna had, appropriately, a Club Sandwich, with soup and a salad while I had a Chicken Salad Sandwich with french fries. The food was good, but the highlight was definitely the fries. Real potatoes, hand-cut and deep fried to perfection. After lunch we walked off our meal by doing a lap around the square where we discovered a cool old hotel, The Fitzpatrick Hotel, built in 1898 and operated for 50 years. Then sat neglected for another 50, before being bought and totally renovated and has been open for only the past two. Donna walked into the lobby dragging me with her. We poked around on the ground floor for a while when an employee invited up to look at some of the guest rooms. Very classy. We are going to go back in May when the town holds one of its two big cruise-ins and spend the night, if we can get a room…

After Washington we headed northeast to Watson Mill State Park. we had visited there way back in 1998 on one of our covered bridge tours. We have a little book we bought that has a bunch of Georgia attractions that we bought back then and right there in the margin was the date we visited (4/10/98) and the notation, “Very nice, need to come back.” Well we did and it was worth it again. Guess we’ll schedule another visit in 2014.

We are spending the night in the Holiday Inn Express in Elberton, GA. Us and a bunch of bass fishermen, because there is a team tournament being held on Thurmond Lake this weekend. The only problem with that, besides worrying that somebody will drag their boat trailer across the hood of the Miata trying to park 60′ of vehicle, is ice is very scarce. Neither machine in the complex spit out any frozen water, pushing the button resulted in nothing but whirring noises. I had to go to the front desk to get my little plastic bucket filled. We have 4 channels of HBO on the TV and for our viewing pleasure this evening, on two of them, is Catwoman with Halle Bery. I’ve got a whole ‘nother rant post about our stay which may come your way later.

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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 87

A Picture Is Worth A 1,000 Words

And sometimes a good chuckle.

Inside the Miata’s Birth Announcement was a photograph of the proud father and his new baby. Check that pose, I guess that was what I thought was cool. Looks a little too much like an awkward teen aged boy who “just happened” to be hanging around the malt shop hoping to get noticed by that car load of cheerleaders.

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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 25

31,000 Miles

Either sometime last night or early this morning the Emperor passed the 31k mark. I’m betting it was yesterday sometime as the odo tonight, when I noticed it, read 31038.

I have narrowed down all the Miata photos I have taken in the last year to the 20 finalists for the 2006 calendar. I need 13, one for each month and then one for the cover page. I’ll probably create a separate gallery for the calendar. While I’m at it I might do a gallery for the 2005 photos too. The seven also-rans from 2006 and the ones already in the Miata gallery that aren’t in the ’05 calendar will still fill the regular Miata Gallery well enough. I wonder if the PHP gallery software I’m using allows subdirectories?

Guess I might never know. I just clicked on the automatically generated link on each gallery page that is supposed to take you to the author’s web site and he hasn’t renewed his web hosting agreement. I guess now is the time to try the enhanced version that I downloaded a while back. At least that web site is still up.

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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 349