Miata Washings

Fantasy Land

I don’t know exactly how they score them (I could look it up I guess*), but I hope that the combined total of 1 Wide Receiver and 1 Tight End don’t usually add up to 40 points. Right now my team is winning it’s “Game” 93 to 55, but my opponent has the two aforementioned position players from the New England Patriots who play on Monday night.

*OK, I looked it up: Every 10 receiving yards = 1 point, 2pt Receiving Conversion = 2 points & every TD Reception = 6 points.

To keep the siblings from quibbling, after breakfast out and grocery shopping today, I washed the Miata. The rest of the day was spent inside watching NFL football. Why? See above.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Tran?si?tions since 10/24/08: 1065

Peach Parade

The Miata got a sponge bath in the garage last night in preparation for the MMC’s participation in the Ridge Peach Festival in Trenton today. I send out an email to the Club stating that Donna and I wouldn’t do the parade without at least 6 cars and that is exactly how many showed up at the meeting spot for our drive to Edgefield for breakfast.

After breakfast we lost a car that wasn’t doing the parade thing, but fortunately there was one car waiting at the intermediate meeting point to bring it back to the required minimum. Donna had originally planned to walk up to the main viewing area and be a spectator because creeping along at 3 miles an hour in the hot sun is not something she cares to do, but the weather was unseasonably cool enough (upper 80’s) that she ended up riding along and throwing candy to the crowds.

The picture above is my favorite of the dozen or so photos I snapped today on the event. I captured a float behind us setting up before the start of the parade in the outside rearview mirror of the Emperor. I could tell they were a church group because the shirts the adults were wearing said on the front “Do you know Jesus?” The back read in big letters, “R U SUR”. I couldn’t make out the fine print, but hopefully it explained the missing E at the end of SUR or maybe the Bible book or passage demonstrated by the Wizard of Oz. It was an off the hip shot and I didn’t realize that I had captured the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion checking the Miatas out until I got home and downloaded the pictures. You can see the all the photos taken over on the MMC Website.

Started up, went down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Tran?si?tions since 10/24/08: 1039

Wash Day

We did three loads of clothes and I did two cars. The Miata has needed a good washing since before pine pollen season, but I put it off until everything pollen-wise has dropped or drifted around. Then I washed the Sonata to get the north Georgia (where it is still spring) pine pollen off of it. Thankfully there is that shark fin satellite antenna in the middle of the roof so I could judge if needed longer arms or step stool to get the whole car clean.

And while that should have been today’s ?Holy Crap This Car Is Big? story, it was trumped by our filling up the gas tank tonight. We had filled it up Friday when it was still half full, but it was now getting down to under an 1/8 of a tank. It holds 17 gallons which is 1-1/2 Miata tanks, so this time it was the most we had ever spent of gas ever. The 14.77 gallons that went in there came to over $50.

I didn’t pay attention to the mileage at Friday’s fill up, but today I did. It took 10.1 gallons then and now it took 14.8, there were 753 miles on the car, and I’m going to assume that they topped the tank when they sold it to us at 29 miles, so the gas mileage was 29 MPG. Not bad for a car rated at 22/35 (26 combined) considering it spent quite a bit of time being slogged through curvy mountain passes.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1005

Mr. Aiken & Me

Donna and I went for a little bike ride this morning. First off we chased the 14% larger moon as it set in the southeast to the Post Office to mail something. Once the moon disappeared behind the clouds and the envelope disappeared in the slot we headed back northwest to go downtown and drop the power bill in the slot outside the SCE&G office. While we were that way we stopped in to see what the so-called founding father of Our Fair City(tm) was looking at. Near as I can tell he is looking down the Alley trying to catch a glimpse of a Tipsy McStumbles waitress. Thirteen miles is all our backsides could stand considering the last time we were on a bike was, as near as I can figure, around Thanksgiving last year.

After breakfast I went out and rinsed all the pine pollen and tree bits (seedling covers and flowering things) that were covering he Emperor. Because it is early in the spring yuck season I didn’t bother with soap, just water and a towel. Later in the day on a trip to the mall I parked, against the expressed consent of my wife, near a tree. In my defense, I figured it was through dropping stuff because it had tiny leaves already showing. I was half right, it wasn’t dropping solid bits, but when we got back to the car it was covered with tiny droplets of sap. At first I considered leaving it on there giving the pine pollen something to stick making the Emperor appear to be wearing a polka dotted robe, but instead when we got home I spent 45 minutes or so with some Quick Detailer wiping off that gunk.

During one of the top transitions while cleaning the outside of the car (I also cleaned and protected the leather seats) I noticed that the top was bunching up on the passenger side at one of the metal bows. Turns out, right where the bow has the radius between vertical and horizontal, the inner dark layer of fabric has been separated from the tan exterior layer. This means that this spot where the top material is very taught, only has one layer of fabric there which will probably tear in the not too distant future. I’m going to call the top guy over in Augusta to see when he can look at it and determine if it is fixable or it is new top time. If a new top is required it will be a big disappointment. The OEM top lasted 5 years and this one will have only made it half that long.

Started up, went down, went up, back down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 979

‘Bout Time

If my tagging of posts is 100% accurate, which is doubtful, the last time I washed the car was November 14th and that was really only dusting and Quick Detailing. Well, whenever the last washing the Emperor actually was, he got the real deal today and it is amazing how purrty he looks from 10 feet away without any of that nasty road dirt on him.

About a year ago Donna lost her wedding ring and we replaced it with a cheapo one we found in a local Dillards. We both got two copies of the same ring in our size and in the past three hundred and sixty odd days we have worked our way through both. Mine currently has one of the diamonds (AKA piece of glass) missing and the gold plating no longer exists on either of our rings. I thought what a nice thing to do for Valentines Day would be to buy some actual gold replacement rings. After hunting around on the web for a bit last night we came up with a ring we both liked. Unsure of our correct sizes we opted to wait until we visited an actual Zales store and had our sizes determined by a trained professional. Which we did today and they measured Donna’s finger as a 7-1/2, which shot a big hole in our plans, as our chosen ring was only available online and only in whole sizes. Back to the net and in short order we found our second choice and ordered them.

We watched The Town today and were tempted to turn on the English Subtitles the Boston accents were so thick. We had an easier time understanding the liverpudlian ones in Nowhere Boy.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 943

Sunday Afternoon In The Driveway

Changed the oil and rotated the tires on the Emperor this afternoon. I used the California Duster to remove the road fur from yesterday’s trip and washed all the windows. Sprayed a little Quick Detailer in places to get off some random gunk and treated the tires so they shine. Even vacuumed the interior.

As long as we are doing the Georgia State Park Challenge we might as well do the the GA County and GA Delorme Challenges as well. There are 42 State Park caches, 159 counties and 59 map pages, but you really need 63 caches because this challenge requires you to find a cache on the page inserts too. That would be 264 unique finds, so unlike in South Carolina we are going to take the easy route, any cache found, can and will be, used towards multiple Challenges. So right now we have 4 State Parks, 19 counties and 17 pages.

On yesterday’s trip there were several caches along our route we didn’t even try for because of time and motivational issues and there was one in particular that I’m glad we didn’t get, Cache Across America – Georgia. That’s right, a challenge with the requirement to find a cache in all 50 states and not just any cache, but the 50 picked out just for it.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 893

Laborless Day

Typically this is the day we native New Englanders consider summer over. School would start this week and the mornings are cool enough for a light coat or sweater. Then I moved south and all that went out the window, school’s been in session for a two or three weeks and the mornings won’t cool off until the end of this month. But today it felt like I was transported back north. We went for a small bike ride this morning and when I stepped outside the garage, I turned right around,went back inside and got a long sleeve shirt to wear. At the end of the ride Donna and I sat outside at the Atlanta Bread Company eating our bagels, drinking our coffee and reading the morning paper and it felt like fall. I would have liked to have been able bottle a bit of that to break out one grim winter day this coming January.

I spend the rest of the morning giving the Emperor his quarterly wash and wax. Amazing the amount of tiny little bits of paint that has chipped off the front end of the car in the 111.5k miles it has traveled and they are all the more noticeable because the primer underneath the dark Garnet Red is white.

Started up, went down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 819