Miatatude

Mini Leaf Tour Wrap Up

cross posted from mastersmiata.com
Members Attending: Brian & Donna Bogardus, Rudy & Patti Wilmoth, Larry & Rita Garner, John & Jackie Nicholls and Ernie Bloom.

Alternate Title #1 You Should Have Been Here Last Week

Two weeks prior to leading the leaf tour Donna and I ventured to the northwestern part of SC looking for places to go and see colorful leaves. We saw some color, but enough brown and bare trees to make us rethink the traditional all day affair we usually present. There was no sense driving all that way and spending all that time to be all disappointed.

So last week, we drove on a closer to home, shorter in time loop that provided a fall sampler in the mid state area. It included breakfast at a favorite mom & pop breakfast joint, a nice drive to farm for a small no admission fee corn maze and a very back road drive to see colorful fall foliage. We felt we had a sure winner and everyone would be home for lunch instead of the usual after dark return.

In the chilly near dawn of this Saturday we were pleased to be joined by 4 other Miatas for our fall drive. Two cars had their tops down for the short drive to breakfast at the Airport Cafe near Twin Lakes Airport in Trenton. As we usually do everywhere we eat as a group we made ourselves right at home by dragging some tables together. That is just fine with the folks who run the cafe as it is definitely a help yourself kind of place. When they are busy you should feel perfectly free to pour your own first cup of coffee while you wait on your food.

After eating, a couple more cars lowered their roofs for the trip to the corn maze at Hickory Hill Farm. I had made up sheets of paper with a map of the route on one side and a list of directions with intermediate mileage numbers on the other side for everyone. It was also especially important for Donna, my navigator, to have one because we had only driven the route once and didn’t want to lead everyone astray. Ahh, the best laid plans…

On one longer stretch of road I must have carried a one when I didn’t need while adding the odometer reading to the leg mileage because I missed a turn and didn’t realize it for sure until too late. But luck was on our side as I realized when we came to the next stop sign that I knew where we were and knew how to get back on track with little fanfare. It just meant that we would take a tour of downtown Edgefield instead of a rural loop around it. Seeing as we were a small group, everyone was just following the car ahead, so only one person even noticed the detour.

I noticed that, as we pulled up to the 1/2 acre corn maze that Donna and I had chased each other all around inside of last week, it was already in the process of being plowed over. The maze is part of the dairy farm’s every Thursday in October open house where they give tours and have other activities for $5. Today was November 3rd and they had wasted no time getting back to farming. I had tried to call on Friday to see if the maze was still going to be up, but the number that I got off Google was for a private residence.

No really big deal, it was a pleasant day and a good spot for a leg stretch. While some folks wandered about the half standing maze others shopped at the self service fridge for fresh milk, both regular and chocolate. As an example to show you how the love of a small open topped sports car can bring wildly divergent personalities together, two different couples were picking and shucking the dried corn off the standing stalks to take with them. One wanted them to feed the cute deer that wander out of the woods behind their house into their backyard and the other wanted them for their backyard as well, but they are used it to lure squirrels to their deaths by BB gun.

The last leg of the journey was a 50 mile route through the Sumter National Forrest to get back to North Augusta and the end of the tour. This is where we had found some really awesome color, but because of 7 days time and the winds of Hurricane Sandy there was virtually nothing but brown and the ever green of pines. To keep thing interesting anyway I threw in a close call with the back end of an Edgefield County Sheriff Deputy’s car who pulled out without looking and a missed turn that had 5 Miatas pulled off to the side of the road in the middle of nowhere only to have a nice couple in a pickup, dressed for a wedding, stop and ask if we were lost.

Alternate Title #2 Is That With a Y or an I?

Back at the corn maze Larry mentioned that a friend and ex club member was showing his Cobra at the CSRA Road Angel’s fall car show at Hooters on Washington Rd, so a plan was formed. One car (Nicholls) made a quick stop at home to drop off milk, one car (Ganers) made the longer trip to their house for the same reason and one car (Wilmoths) just went home. Five of us wandered around a gawking at the cool rides in all shapes and sizes for about an hour and were getting ready to split when the Garners returned and we all decided to have some lunch.

Hooters was naturally jammed what with the car show, college football on the dozens of TVs and the nattily attired servers, so we grabbed one of the only free tables and ordered some drinks. Our waitress introduced herself and after she left none of the guys were sure if she spelled her name with a Y or an I even though she was wearing a name tag.

When Brandi returned with the drinks and took our food orders we all made sure to notice that it was with an I. The food was, surprisingly, not bad. Donna enjoyed the crab legs and I’d order the grilled fish tacos again. None of us bought the official Hooters calendar that one server was hawking, even with the promise that she could get the girls to sign our copy.

When we got to the car show I bough 6 tickets for $5 for the 50-50 raffle before I knew that you had to be present to win and they wouldn’t call the number until around five o’clock. We asked Brandi whether she would still be around at 5 that afternoon and she said she’d be just about getting ready to go home. So to go along with the standard tip I gave her the raffle tickets and said, “Good luck.”

After lunch the Donna & I, John & Jackie and Ernie returned to our cars to head home leaving Larry & Rita to enjoy more of the car show.

I wonder if “Brandi with an I” won the 50-50.

Fuelly

I’ve been keeping track of the Sonata’s mileage on Fuelly since January. I have recorded 35 fill ups in that time frame and have averaged 29.7 MPG. Some other fun stats include: $3.29 Avg. Price/Gallon, $44.94 Avg. Price/Fuel-up, $0.111 Avg. Price/Mile and $1,572.88 Total Spent on gas. The last couple of times we’ve filled up the Miata I’ve been checking the MPG figure and it has been pretty darn good too, so tonight I added it to my “garage” on Fuelly.

You can now see the average MPG for both cars in the left sidebar. Odd coincidence, after the one fill up the Emperor’s figure exactly matched the Purple Whale’s 35 fill up figure of 29.7. The EPA says the Sonata should get 22 city and 35 highway while the Miata was rated at 22 city, 28 highway, so I expect the Miata’s average to drop some as time goes on.

Top Count Placeholder

The top went up on Monday because of a threat of rain and stayed up ever since due to the cold. That same cold didn’t prevent us from riding the tandem to work on Tuesday though because there is a remarkable difference in windchill factor between 15 MPH and 55 MPH. Plus at fifteen you are working, as opposed to just sitting still at fifty-five. Tomorrow it will go down for the way home from work as it is supposed to be back in the low 80’s.

The top is starting to look a little ragged in a couple spots. The tan fabric is worn enough that the black under layer is showing through. Where that is happening is a double layer of material anyway because that is where the top shop repaired it when it was wearing through on the inside a while back. With the advent of Purple Whale ownership the rate of top transitions has decreased to a trickle, so I’m sure we can get a couple more years use out of it, if we can stand the unkempt look that long.

I don’t know if it is that particular Robbins top or the installation of the top or a little of both that is to blame, but the top count stands at about half of the OEM top before it needed replacing. But, I guess you get what you pay for, because the Robbins top was about half the cost of a official Mazda unit…

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Tran­si­tions since 10/24/08: 1173

Auto Matters

Last Sunday when we returned from our northeast trip, I parked the Purple Whale. Monday night I washed all the gunk off of it, that had accumulated in the 2,772.7 miles we drove it. Today was the first time we got back in it since then. The weather has been positively autumnal here, so we drove the Miata to work and home with the top down all week.

With nearly all of those trip miles on the highway, our average mileage for the trip was 32.6 MPG. We bought gas before we left and then again when we got back. On the trip we filled up 5 times and averaged $3.81 per gallon. Of those seven fill ups the cheapest was $3.21 here in Aiken and the most expensive was $4.10 in New York.

Super Moon Other Way

We went out driving in the Miata looking for tonight’s Super Moon. Once we got heading east we could see we were in trouble because we could see the tops of thunder clouds on the horizon. It was still in the upper 80’s, but the sun was down and it seemed pleasant enough, so we kept on driving. Followed one road til it T’d at a dirt road, flipped a mental coin and went left. A little less than a mile we came to a paved road with a recognizable name, so we took it and headed back into town for some ice cream.

Part way back, as we drove along a smooth, two-lane back road there was the moon off to the left. Found a place to stop and take some photos, but by that time it was too high in the sky to look anything different that a plain ol’ full moon. Fooled around snapping photos, but nothing came out worth anything except maybe this picture of The Emperor with a car passing in the background taken facing away from the Super Moon.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Tran?si?tions since 10/24/08: 1132

A Tale of Four Circle Ks

Today was the monthly MMC breakfast run and our destination was the same place as it has been for the last two March’s, the North Augusta Optimist Club Pancake Breakfast at the Holy Trinity Lutheran Church.

The event organizer zipped off an email yesterday to remind everyone of the event and she listed the meeting location as “at the Circle K at exit 5.” That very same email said we would depart from there at 8 AM sharp.

When Donna and I arrived at Exit 5 we noticed that there was a Circle K [1] just past the Interstate on the northeast side, but it looked a little hard to get to and there were no Miatas visible. We were about 15 minutes early for the departure time, so we passed right by to grab a geocache that was just up the road. As we turned down the little road to get the cache we realized there was a Circle K [2] right at the corner. No Miatas there either.

We found the cache and after signing the log we looked into Circle K [2] again, it was now 5 minutes before the planned departure and there were still no Miatas there. Donna wondered out loud that our event planner must have meant Exit #1 as that is where we had met the last two years. We decided that if there were no Miatas at Circle K [1] we would just head on to the church via Exit #1.

Just about then we noticed a Circle K [3] on the northwest side of the Interstate and there were two Miatas there. We pulled in. As the six of us chatted while waiting for our event organizer to lead us to the the church we all wondered about the number of Circle K gas stations here. We weren’t too concerned as our leader was slightly late last year, so maybe she would be this year too. At 8:05, with our stomachs growling in hunger, we all decided to do what Donna and I were going to do before we stumbled on them, go to the church via I-20 Exit #1

As we passed by the previous year’s meeting spot, Circle K [4] there were no Miatas there either. When we arrived at the church, there was our event leader and one other Miata Club person waiting for us. They had met at Circle K [4] and by 10 after eight when no one else had shown, they drove to the church.

The event has been on the Club calendar since the January planning meeting and it has always listed the meeting place as the Circle K gas station off I-20 Exit #1 on Martintown Rd. Our group of six didn’t read the Club Calendar because of the email reminder. The person who did meet at the correct Circle K didn’t read the Calendar or the email either, she just went to where we had met before.

Anyway, all’s well that ended well. We did get together, have some conversation, some good eats and the cost went to a good cause.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Tran?si?tions since 10/24/08: 1118

Windows 8

I tried out the consumer preview of the next version of Windows last night and this evening. Then I deleted it. I’m guessing you smarty pants phone users will feel right at home. If I had a touch screen on the laptop it might have been cooler, but it wasn’t just the whole mouse gesture thing that was a bust though, there were a limited amount of “apps” available and most of them required a Windows Live and/or Xbox log-in. I couldn’t get an App to play my existing music or videos and if you wanted to open a file explorer you just ended up back on a very familiar looking desktop indistinguishable from any version of windows from 95 and up. I think for desktop computing I’ll be sticking to Windows 7.

Just like I predicted, although raining in the morning, it was absolutely a perfect afternoon for driving around in a convertible, of which ours was home in the garage.