Miatatude

Car Camo Considered

bmw m4 camo small

This is the back end of the new BMW M4 covered in camo because they are not ready to actually debut them yet, although they are out test driving them. I drove its predecessor, the M3, back in 2008 at a Susan B Komen Ultimate Drive and effervesced about the experience:

414HP V-8. Yikes! This car should be illegal, but I’m glad it is not. Just the exhaust note alone is enough to make the hairs on your arm stand up. Not deep throaty Detroit rumble, but raspy, race car purposeful. One suggestion, when you mash the go pedal to the floor you should already have your head back on the headrest or it will be snapped back to it. This is as close as you can get to experiencing a catapult launch from the flight deck of an aircraft carrier on land, unless you drag race funny cars on the weekend.

If I was really rich, or kinda rich and single, this thing would be my daily driver, but seeing as I’m neither of those things I drive a 10 year-old Miata (not that there is anything wrong with that.)

What I think might be cool, and I wouldn’t even have to be rich, would be to find a place that vinyl wraps cars and cover the Miata in that black & white swirly camo. Although, I think to do that I would need to be single, or if I did that without asking for permission, I would end up single. 🙂

Ugly Is In The Eye Of The Beholder

Behold!
01-pininfarina-alfa

From AutoBlog: Take a good look at the picture of the Alfa Romeo 2uettottanta concept by Pininfarina, because the production Spider that will be a joint development with the coming Mazda MX-5 Miata isn’t expected to look anything like it. According to a report in Autocar, designers at Fiat\’s Centro Stile couldn’t figure out how to translate the concept to a production car.

To which I say good thing, so even if it did look sort of like this, later in the same article there was this: …but won’t have any body panels in common with the Mazda.

Maybe next year, if they regrow the passenger foot well and lower the door height to allow comfortable elbow resting again, a 2015 Miata might be in the cards.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1244

Blast From The Past

I’ve been kind of slack on the blogging around here, with nothing much interesting to write about, I thought maybe I’d fill this spot up with a scintillating post from 10 years ago. Back in 2003 this was actually two blogs The Miata Diaries and Brian’s Daily Rant and I posted something on both every day. I hoped to find something good and I struck out, apparently it was kind of a dull day then too.

From Brian’s Daily Rant:

When Will I Watch A Movie Again?
It has been two weeks at least since I’ve watched a DVD. Right now there are 4 Netflix rentals on the coffee table waiting a spin. ( Rabbit-Proof Fence, Moonlight Mile, Spirited Away and Adaptation ) Also stacked up there are 3 other movies from my Co-Worker DVD Swap Club: Pork Chop Hill, Tuck Everlasting and K-19. Plus on top of those I have A Brother From Another Planet that I picked up in a truck-stop in rural North Carolina for $4.88. I guess I\’m going to have to take a break from writing in 3 blogs and reading 10 for a night or two…

From The Miata Diaries:

House Cleaning Day
Did a little sprucing up around here, very little, but I feel better.
1) This site is now a proud member of the Blogging Brians, so I added a link to the left.
2) I got rid of a stale weblog that hadn’t been updated since like March from the Mortal Blog list and added Blogumentary, go check it out.
3) This page’s extension is now PHP instead of HTML. I snagged a script that allows me to keep a constantly updated set of stats in my search for ET and installed it on the left. Thanks Sam Ley.

Purchased Today: $0
Money spent since 03/03/03: $923.63
Started up, still up.
Top Transitions since 02/02/03: 166

The money figure was money spent on the Miata and of course I was keeping track of the top transitions back then too.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1241

Bird Feeder

When we eat at DD we always sit at the “bar” that is at the window looking out at the parking lot. It is always fun to watch people park as they try and fit their cars in parking spaces, especially getting an SUV into a spot that has cars in both adjacent spots. We also get to watch the resident sparrows swoop down on the crumbs left behind from dropped food around the two outside tables on the sidewalk.

One day last week we were in the Miata and had it parked in a spot in the front. We were early enough that the car traffic was light, but there were a couple brown sparrows dining on the sidewalk. I guess they finished everything on the ground because at one point they hopped up on the lower lip of the mouth the Emperor. They sat there looking inside the mouth inquisitively for a second or two before disappearing into it and coming right back out.

They couldn’t go far because I have a mesh grill in there to sort of protect the AC condenser. But that is only as far as they wanted to go, they were picking at the dead bugs collected in the grill.

By the time I thought that’d be a cool picture and I grabbed the cell phone, then fumbled around trying to figure out how to take a picture, someone pulled in next to the Miata and spooked them off.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1235

Turns Out It Isn’t Always

Screendoor

As good as a pickup truck that is.

We have needed to replace the screen door to the screened in porch on the back of the house since last year. It takes a water beating because of its location near a roof valley. But when the bottom part of the screening spontaneously separated from its channel at the bottom last week, it forced our hand. We had to get a new one.

The door is 36 x 80 in size and the width was a couple of inches too wide to fit through the Sonata’s pass through trunk opening, so it was eliminated from cargo duty. Next in consideration was our usual go-to car, the Miata, which I have proudly proclaimed here on many an occasion as being as good as a pickup on a sunny day. We talked through a couple scenarios in which we might carry a screen door back from the store using the Miata, but couldn’t think of a good way, so opted for Plan C.

We decided to hand carry it back from the nearest BBHIW which is only a little more than a mile from home. Our biggest obstacle would be crossing the busy Whiskey Road in front of the store, but because we made the trip over before 8 o’clock this morning, the normal high amount traffic usually present was nowhere to be found, we didn’t even have to slow as we changed from parking lot to street.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1229